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Elephant DNA Studied

Posted by michael on from the african-or-european dept.

randomErr writes "Africa may harbor three species of elephant instead of just two, suggests a study based on DNA extracted from dung. If that is confirmed, it means that roughly 12,000 elephants living in western Africa are a distinct and endangered species, due to their small scattered populations as reported here at Newsday."

1 of 25 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Not convinced by Yohahn · · Score: 5, Informative

    I haven't looked at the article, but if they are looking to see how distant 2 sets of elephants are genetically, they are probably using mitochondrial DNA.

    Since mitochondrial DNA is passed from mother to offspring, it should (in theory) stay the same, never changing. However, mutations occur, so you can tell the genetic distance by the differences in mitochondrial DNA by counting differences in the mitochondria (assuming some of them have common females).

    The limit, of course, depends on the odds you count for mutation in this dna. None of this is purely exact. It's all statistically determinable.

    There's talk of how most of those of European decent are related to 1 of 7 women in their past.
    It's documented in a book called "The Seven Daughters of Eve".

    Really interesting stuff.

    IANA Biologist, but my girlfriend just got her MS in Bioinformatics! :)