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Asked by Bradley to Christie, Dan, David, Dawn, Sian on 20 Jun 2016.
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Dawn Lau answered on 20 Jun 2016:
Scientists worked out the elephant genome (all the DNA sequences that make up an elephant) in 2009 for the African elephant, and the Asian elephant genome came a few years later in 2015. However, the sequences we have for the elephant isn’t as complete as the information we have for human genes. We’re still not quite sure of how many genes an elephant has, and in any case, the list would be too long to give to you!
What is interesting, though, is recently researchers discovered that elephants have extra copies of a gene that can fight cancer cells. Humans only have one copy of this gene and elephants have 20!
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Christie Waddington answered on 20 Jun 2016:
They’ve even sequenced the genome of the Woolly Mammoth, the ancestor of the elephant which is now extinct, in 2008! They found one frozen and managed to extract enough DNA from it to sequence it. From this they can see how elephants evolved from woolly mammoths, what is different about them and what advantages or disadvantages they might have just by looking at the genes.
Another interesting fact about the African elephant genome is that they have more “olfactory receptor” genes than any other animal sequenced so far. These olfactory receptor genes are responsible for smell!
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Sian Thomas answered on 21 Jun 2016:
Of course, many of them will be similar to human genes – particularly the ones that code mammalian proteins conserved across species.
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