Polar Bears are Rewiring Their Own Genetics to Survive a Warming Climate (nbcnews.com) 26
"Polar bears are still sadly expected to go extinct this century," with two-thirds of the population gone by 2050," says the lead researcher on a new study from the University of East Anglia in Britain.
But their research also suggests polar bears "are rapidly rewiring their own genetics in a bid to survive," reports NBC News, in "the first documented case of rising temperatures driving genetic change in a mammal." "I believe our work really does offer a glimmer of hope — a window of opportunity for us to reduce our carbon emissions to slow down the rate of climate change and to give these bears more time to adapt to these stark changes in their habitats," [the lead author of the study told NBC News].
Building on earlier University of Washington research, [lead researcher] Godden's team analyzed blood samples from polar bears in northeastern and southeastern Greenland. In the slightly warmer south, they found that genes linked to heat stress, aging and metabolism behaved differently from those in northern bears. "Essentially this means that different groups of bears are having different sections of their DNA changed at different rates, and this activity seems linked to their specific environment and climate," Godden said in a university press release. She said this shows, for the first time, that a unique group of one species has been forced to "rewrite their own DNA," adding that this process can be considered "a desperate survival mechanism against melting sea ice...."
Researchers say warming ocean temperatures have reduced vital sea ice platforms that the bears use to hunt seals, leading to isolation and food scarcity. This led to genetic changes as the animals' digestive system adapts to a diet of plants and low fats in the absence of prey, Godden told NBC News.
But their research also suggests polar bears "are rapidly rewiring their own genetics in a bid to survive," reports NBC News, in "the first documented case of rising temperatures driving genetic change in a mammal." "I believe our work really does offer a glimmer of hope — a window of opportunity for us to reduce our carbon emissions to slow down the rate of climate change and to give these bears more time to adapt to these stark changes in their habitats," [the lead author of the study told NBC News].
Building on earlier University of Washington research, [lead researcher] Godden's team analyzed blood samples from polar bears in northeastern and southeastern Greenland. In the slightly warmer south, they found that genes linked to heat stress, aging and metabolism behaved differently from those in northern bears. "Essentially this means that different groups of bears are having different sections of their DNA changed at different rates, and this activity seems linked to their specific environment and climate," Godden said in a university press release. She said this shows, for the first time, that a unique group of one species has been forced to "rewrite their own DNA," adding that this process can be considered "a desperate survival mechanism against melting sea ice...."
Researchers say warming ocean temperatures have reduced vital sea ice platforms that the bears use to hunt seals, leading to isolation and food scarcity. This led to genetic changes as the animals' digestive system adapts to a diet of plants and low fats in the absence of prey, Godden told NBC News.
"Rewiring Their Own Genetics"? -- Nope! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: "Rewiring Their Own Genetics"? -- Nope! (Score:1)
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Yes, the article is poorly written. But it is not necessarily the case that it’s just “physics” in the sense you seem to imply. See Denis Noble’s talks https://youtu.be/8OhMmjlYvxU?s... [youtu.be] https://youtu.be/DT0TP_Ng4gA?s... [youtu.be] as examples. Is he right? Quite possibly not, but it isn’t beyond possibility that environmental stresses change what the DNA -> RNA -> protein expression process produces.
If warming causes Polar Bears to lose their white coats and look more like grizzly
Re:"Rewiring Their Own Genetics"? -- Nope! (Score:5, Insightful)
It's incredibly frustrating to see mainstream media so consistently phrase evolutionary phenomena in ways that suggest that organisms somehow have conscious control of their genetics. At best, it is a simple misunderstanding, but my suspicion is that it is a longstanding, intentional effort to undermine natural selection and foundational principles of evolutionary biology. This is why, even after its widespread verification and acceptance by the scientific community, the general public still remains ignorant or misinformed of even the most basic tenets of the theory.
A more honest title might be along the lines of "Genetic analysis reveals polar bears that are better able to tolerate a warming climate are being selected over those that cannot, and this adaptation is occurring faster than previously anticipated."
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I find the title misleading as well. The real news here is that polar bears seem to have independently invented CRISPR and may be ahead of us in genetics engineering. We should increase tariffs and invest heavily in our own biotech companies to make sure they don't outpace us long term!
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A more honest title might be along the lines of "Genetic analysis reveals polar bears that are better able to tolerate a warming climate are being selected over those that cannot, and this adaptation is occurring faster than previously anticipated."
That's a long sentence that's not understandable by the target audience and too long to serve as a title.
I'd say just: "Polar bears evolve for warming climate faster than expected".
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Actually, some of it just might be going on.
First, "Genetics" is a bit of an undefined term. There are Genes, which code for actions (in fact proteins to be made which perform actions), and transcription factors which guide when these genes are read and therefore activated.
For example, polar bears might make more stress hormones due to the heat, which might activate some genes which would otherwise not be active.
Apart from that, re-shuffling DNA [wikipedia.org] does occur in some cases. In humans, this is one of the things
Ship them to antarctica (Score:3)
and they can hunt penguins
Re: Ship them to antarctica (Score:2)
Science (tm) vs. Science (tm) (Score:2)
So the people that believe evolution is the only solution for Earth's diversity of life, will not describe an actual evolutionary process as such?
Claims not remotely supported (Score:5, Informative)
Building on earlier University of Washington research, [lead researcher] Godden's team analyzed blood samples from polar bears in northeastern and southeastern Greenland. In the slightly warmer south, they found that genes linked to heat stress, aging and metabolism behaved differently from those in northern bears. "Essentially this means that different groups of bears are having different sections of their DNA changed at different rates, and this activity seems linked to their specific environment and climate," Godden said in a university press release. She said this shows, for the first time, that a unique group of one species has been forced to "rewrite their own DNA," adding that this process can be considered "a desperate survival mechanism against melting sea ice...."
Alarming that this is quote is allegedly from the person listed as the lead author on the study [springer.com].
The study didn't perform any measurements that could establish a rate of change of DNA. It didn't even look at DNA or any heritable differences between the bears, it only looks at RNA expression of markers it said were correlated.
More specifically it only looked at RNA expression *in the blood* for *17 bears* and used the average temperature of the nearest town to the bear population. So temperature was just a proxy for population with lots of confounders. The study did nothing either to show that those were *advantageous* changes for bears in heat-stressed areas.
About the only actual take away from the study is "there were differences in blood transcriptomes of bears at different latitudes." Any further meaning is an unevidenced hypothetical.
Which could certainly be a starting point for further research. But that's about the extent of it.
Sure, that SOUNDS impressive, but (Score:2)
At first glance being a polar bear geneticist appears glamorous... but then you learn they got constantly picked on in school, given wedgies and stuffed in polar bear lockers.
And don't get me started on how the girl polar bears are always laughing at those glasses-wearing geeky science types...
The more you know (Score:2)
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Polar bears have doctorates in gentic engineering. How did they get so far ahead of us?
I'm guessing they can think outside the boxy coordinate system that our regular Cartesian bears use.
Re: The more you know (Score:2)
If only we had a word for adaptation like this (Score:2)
if only we had a word for adaptation like this, like Evolving.
Rewiring their genetics? (Score:1)
starts with bullshit, IS bullshit (Score:1)
"Polar bears are still sadly expected to go extinct this century," with two-thirds of the population gone by 2050," says the lead researcher on a new study from the University of East Anglia in Britain.
Well.
As recently as 2018 widespread studies showed that only 3 of 20 wild population groups were decreasing, and the overall number of polar bears was increasing steadily.
Now the propaganda engines have gotten going, the litany is "well we didn't know the data very precisely before so we were guessing, making
Polar bears are just white grizzly bears (Score:3)
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