Science, Space and Technology News 2024
A collaborative study uncovered preserved ancient chromosome structures in a 52,000-year-old woolly mammoth, providing unprecedented insights into its genetics and the conditions that allowed such preservation, drawing parallels with freeze-dried food techniques., and the Centre Nacional d’Anàlisi Genòmica and Centre for Genomic Regulation have discovered fossils of ancient chromosomes in the remains of a woolly mammoth that died 52,000 years ago.
“The obvious question for us was: why is it a ‘woolly mammoth’? Why isn’t it a ‘shockingly bald mammoth’?” said Dr. Thomas Gilbert, director of the Center for Hologenomics and co-corresponding author of the paper. “The fact that the compartmentalization was still preserved in these fossils was critical, because it made it possible to look, for the very first time, at which genes were active in a woolly mammoth.
“The survival of loops in these ancient chromosomes is perhaps the most impressive part,” said ICREA Research Professor Marc A. Marti-Renom, co-corresponding author on the study and group leader at Centre Nacional d’Anàlisi Genòmica, as well as the Centre for Genomic Regulation, both in Barcelona, Spain. “DNA loops, which are only 50 nanometers in size, are important because they bring activating DNA sequences close to their gene targets.
The idea that the mammoth remains, unearthed in 2018 in Siberian permafrost, were preserved in a glass-like state is not so farfetched. Without realizing it, many civilizations developed ways to induce a “glass transition” in their food as a way to preserve it, usually by a combination of cooling and dehydration. This resulted in foods, like tortilla chips and beef jerky – that are more brittle than the original food, but that last much longer.
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