By Pat Kelly. Doctors who need to induce artificial hypothermia may in future be aided by a synthetic, cold-tolerant blood protein of the woolly mammoth.
During a study reported in The Scientist, the research team synthesised blood protein using fragmented DNA sequences from Siberian mammoths that lived between 25,000 to 43,000 years ago. The discovered that the haemoglobin they produced could still supply oxygen to tissues, even in freezing conditions.
Surgeons are sometimes required to induce artificial hypothermia when performing brain and heart operations but one potential danger of this procedure is that it can sometimes result in ischaemic tissue injury following reduced levels of blood flow.
However due to genetic mutations in the haemoglobin gene of the mammoths and the resulting synthisis of the blood protein in the laboratory, this new development could in future provide surgeons with a solution to the potential hazard.
“Further investigations are needed for applying these structural features to the design of a new generation of medically-relevant, Hb-based oxygen carriers,” concluded the authors.
The full study, originally published in the journal Biochemistry, is accessible at http://bit.ly/qkyB6R.
pat.kelly@imt.ie
About Pat Kelly
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