Zoonomy Project

Humans are mammals and we share the planet with 6,000 other species of mammals. We originally had a common ancestor, but in the last 100 million years we have diversified and adapted to almost any environment on earth.

A human is very different from an elephant, a squirrel or a lion, but we all keep a set of common genes that have remained unchanged throughout evolution, those unaltered genes account for at least 10% of the total and play a fundamental role in the health of the organism.

Their malfunction can trigger diseases, both rare and common, including various types of cancer. To locate this set of shared genes, a team of scientists has launched the Zoonomy project, cataloging and comparing the DNA sequences of 240 species, such as bears. anteater, the African savannah elephant or the zebu, thus creating the largest comparative mammalian genomics resource in the world.

Dogs are also in the study and curiously one of the protagonists is the famous dog Balto, the hero of children, this story happened almost a century ago at the beginning of 1925, at that time an epidemic of diphtheria, a disease that can be fatal and which mainly affects children under 5 years of age, developed in a town in Alaska, diphtheria antitoxin was desperately needed, but what was available was in the city of Anchorage, more than 1,000 miles away, the soil could not be carried by sea, since the waters were frozen and it could not be carried in the primitive airplanes of the time due to bad weather.

So they developed a plan to transfer the serum by rail from ancorach to nenama and from there to travel the remaining thousand kilometers in dog sleds, 20 guides and more than 100 dogs participated in the race, including Balto and togo, Balto took fame, but Togo led the pack of dogs through the longest and most dangerous part of the race.

Researchers making news now analyzed Balto's DNA within the zoonomy project and compared it with 682 21st century dog and wolf genomes, the result served to explain that Balto was genetically healthier and less inbred than modern breeds and had characteristics adapted to the extreme environment of Alaska, as it bore an ancestral similarity to Siberian huskies, Alaskan malamutes, Greenland sled dogs, and other dogs from Asia.

The researchers hope to expand the zoomia project to include other historical dogs such as the equally heroic Togo.

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