No, no one seriously believed that mummified mini-skeleton discovered 15 years ago in Atacama Desert in norrn Chile came from an alien who died on Earth. But how to allocate mummified bones of this being – archaeologists and archaeologists did not know that for many years. And so mummy, baptized according to ir location on name "ATA", provided material for numerous mystery shows.

DNA analysis has now shown that mummy is skeleton of a much prematurely born girl who has had many genetic mutations that lead to bone and skull malformations. Researchers at University of California in San Francisco and Stanford University report this in a final article in journal Genome Research (Nolan et al., 2018). The fact that skeleton is not a millennia-old relic of tiny early humans was already clear: researchers estimate age of bones for just 40 years.

The defects in genetic makeup of female fetus, which were shown in DNA analysis, also explain abnormally large eye caves as well as tapered skull – a form that aroused associations with representations of extraterrestrials in some viewers. Many of gene mutations that have now been proven know that y played a role in short stature, scoliosis and malformations of muscles and bones, team reports. Or mutations are known as possible triggers of diseases, but have never been associated with such developmental disorders.

"I had heard about a friend of body and got me a photo. You can't look at this and think ' this is uninteresting '. It's pretty impressive, "microbiologist Garry Nolan recalls start of DNA sequencing five years ago. Today, after a comparison with reference genomes of chimpanzees and rhesus monkeys, ATA was definitely a human being. A geographical population comparison also suggests Chilean origin and ratio of read x and Y chromosomes to female sex.

Even at first examination, or unusual features were noticed: small skeleton has only ten instead of usual twelve rib pairs. In addition, bone expert Ralph Lachman found out that certain parts of bone Atas surprisingly looked like those of a six-or seven-year-old child.

The mummy was a fetus whose bones quickly aged

Should tiny ATA actually have lived so long with unusual deformations? No, researchers now conclude that ATA has been a fetus, but has suffered from a rare disease that will leave bones prematurely aging.

It was only possible to determine all this because scientists from Atas ribs were able to extract and sequence intact genomes. This succeeded because skeleton, mummified by Desert Sun, was only about 40 years old. "This is a great example of how sequencing of old finds helps us to analyze even modern specimens," says Butte. And it shows that in patients looking for causes of certain diseases, one should focus not only on a single mutation.

DNA what is DNA?

DNA is abbreviation of deoxyribonucleicacid, originally from English language. In German, refore, one also speaks of DNA. In normal condition, it occurs as a double helix in every cell of human being. On this strand, entire human genome is stored as code from base pairs.

se four Genbausteine – symbolized by letters A, t, G and C – are bases adenine, thymine, Guanin and cytosine. Their letters produce a unique code, much like strokes of machine-readable labels in supermarket.

What is RNA?

In order for DNA information to be implemented, it must be read. This process produces ribonucleic acids (RNA), including certain messenger RNA, which regulate construction of proteins (protein molecules). Thus, information from DNA in organism is put into action.

In turn, proteins do not only control biochemistry of body. organs, bones, muscles, skin and tissues of humans are shaped because proteins in ir cells have say.

The researchers also thought about causes of Atas numerous malformations: "We can only speculate, but body was found in La Noria, one of many abandoned cities in Atacama desert where nitrate was mined." This may have played a role in prenatal DNA damage. As early as 2013, same research group had proclaimed Garry Nolan, more detailed investigations for human origin of bones. The realisation is refore not entirely new – even if results of DNA analyses were officially published only now.

Date Of Update: 23 March 2018, 12:03