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The DNA of a rabbit, owned by Charles Darwin, showed how this species had survived the fatal disease, myxomatosis, by natural selection.
Darwin's rabbit, which developed his theory of natural selection in 1838, was among nearly 200 rabbits analyzed in a study conducted by the University of Cambridge.
Darwin's rabbit was a wild rabbit collected in Kent, said a spokesman for the Natural History Museum in London, where he is now hosted.
The specimens used in this study date from 1865 to 2013 and come from 11 natural history museums in the United Kingdom, France, Australia and the United States.
Scientists have sequenced nearly 20,000 genes and found that modern rabbits in the United Kingdom, France and Australia have acquired resistance to myxomatosis through the same genetic modifications.
They have been able to identify the mutations that have appeared since the myxomatosis pandemics of the 1950s.
They found that resistance to disease was based on the cumulative impact of multiple mutations of different genes.
Natural selection is a process by which organisms better adapted to an environment survive and reproduce.
Lead author Joel Alves of Cambridge University said, "We compared rabbits collected prior to the virus outbreak in the 1950s with modern populations that developed resistance, and found that the same genes had changed in all three countries.
"Many of these genes play a key role in the rabbit's immune system.
"Evolution often evolves through large changes in unique genes, but our results show that resistance to myxomatosis has probably evolved through many minor effects distributed throughout the genome."
He explained that it was difficult to obtain DNA samples from so many long-dead rabbits and that all natural history museums do not keep rabbits as they are not "very exotic" compared to other species.
Darwin mentioned the preparation of the rabbit skeleton used in the study in his book The Variation of Domestically Controlled Animals and Plants.
The rabbit was part of a major donation of over 100 specimens of mammals and birds made by Charles Darwin to the Natural History Museum's collection in 1868, the museum said.
The study is published in the journal Science.
– Press Association
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