14 DAY TRIAL // Asian elephants and woolly mammoths evolved from the same ancestor, except woolly mammoths underwent a series of transformations that allowed them to survive in extreme cold, and Asian elephants grew accustomed to lush forests.
As part of a new research project, specialist Vincent Lynch at the University of Chicago in Illinois, US, and colleagues studied the genetic makeup of three Asian elephants and a couple of millennia-old woolly mammoth carcasses.
The team eventually zoomed in on about 1,600 genes that differ between the two species. It is these distinct genes that explain why, although evolving from the same ancestors, mammoths and elephants thrived in very different environments.
These genes that were distinct in woolly mammoths when compared to Asian elephants were in charge of fat storage, circadian clock, skin and hair growth and makeup, and other adaptations that the species needed to survive.
The outcome of this study could make it possible for researchers to kind of, sort of bring back woolly mammoths by recreating the genetic particularities that defined the species in Asian elephants.
As explained by evolutionary geneticist Beth Shapiro with the University of California, Santa Cruz, such a genetic engineering project would essentially deliver an Asian elephant perfectly equipped to live in, say, Siberia.
“These are genes we would need to alter in an elephant genome to create an animal that was mostly an elephant, but actually able to survive somewhere cold,” the specialist said, as cited by Nature.