Scientists Resurrect Mammoth Hemoglobin

Scientists Resurrect Mammoth Hemoglobin


by Andrew Curry on May 2, 2010 1:00 PM

Defrosted. Woolly mammoth hemoglobin contains unique regions (blue) that interact with other regions (red) to deliver oxygen at a steady rate regardless of temperature.

Credit: (mammoth) Royal British Columbia Museum; (inset) Joerg StetefeldBy inserting a 43,000-year-old woolly mammoth gene into Escherichia coli bacteria, scientists have figured out how these ancient beasts adapted to the subzero temperatures of prehistoric Siberia and North America. The gene, which codes for the oxygen-transporting protein hemoglobin, allowed the animals to keep their tissues supplied with oxygen even at very low temperatures. "It's no different from going back 40,000 years and taking a blood sample from a living mammoth," says Kevin Campbell, a biologist at the University of Manitoba in Canada.

Campbell's team obtained DNA from mammoth bone preserved in the Siberian permafrost. It was a long journey for Campbell, whose specialty is the physiology of mammals. A decade ago, he saw a Discovery Channel program on the recovery of a mammoth specimen encased in ice and wondered if such specimens might hold clues to the physiology of the mammoth.

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