London, May 3: A form of “anti-freeze blood” may have had helped woolly mammoths survive life in the Arctic by keeping their bodies supplied with oxygen all the time even at freezing temperatures, says a new study. An international team has based its findings on resurrecting a woolly mammoth blood protein, called haemoglobin, which is found in red blood cells where it binds to and carries oxygen.
The scientists have found that the woolly mammoths possessed a genetic adaptation allowing their haemoglobin to release oxygen into the body even at low temperatures. “We have identified physiological properties of woolly mammoth haemoglobin that may have played an important role in adaptation of this African-derived lineage to Arctic environments during the Pleistocene era,” Dr Kevin Campbell, who led the team was quoted by the British media as saying.
In fact, in their study, the scientists sequenced haemoglobin genes from DNA of three Siberian mammoths, tens of thousands of years old, which were preserved in permafrost.
The mammoth DNA sequences were converted into RNA (a molecule similar to DNA which is central to the production of proteins) and inserted into E. Coli bacteria. The bacteria faithfully manufactured the mammoth protein.
“The resulting haemoglobin molecules are no different than ‘going back in time’ and taking a blood sample from a real mammoth,” Dr Campbell said.