Ever wondered how woolly mammoths can live in the extreme cool weather conditions of the Arctic? An intensive genetic research revealed that these ancient giants and their contemporary relatives, the Asian and African elephants, showed genetic adaptations that made the woolly mammoth thrive in such adverse conditions, Reuters reported.

The study, published in Cell Reports, compared the genomes of two mammoths found in a Siberian permafrost. One of the remains is said to be 18,500 years old while the other is 60,000. They were compared with the genomes of three Asian elephants and one African elephant.

Geneticist Vincent Lynch from the University of Chicago said that mammoths possessed genetic changes associated with skin and hair development, as well as fat, insulin and temperature tolerance that differentiated them from modern elephants. All these factors being considered, may have helped the mammoths adapt to the Arctic.

According to the Science Recorder, what scientists cannot know for now was how these genes expressed themselves in woolly mammoths. Since the mammoth is no longer in existence, Lynch and his team used ancestral sequence reconstruction to "resurrect" a mammoth version of the "TRPV3" gene by transplanting it into human cells. The mammoth's "TRPV3" gene created a protein with a lower response to heat, explaining the mammoth's high tolerance to cold temperatures.

Engadget said that while this study found 1.4 million genetic variants affecting the proteins by some 1,600 genes, the results might not help scientists resurrect the mammoth, but it will help geneticists better understand the molecular basis of the mammoth's evolution.

Lynch himself is not in favor of resurrecting the mammoth. He said that even if it will soon be technically possible to resurrect a mammoth, it is not something that we should do. Modern humans are not responsible for the extinction of mammoths, so we owe no debt to nature.