Chernobyl dogs teach their resources to survive

More than 35 years after the world’s deadliest nuclear accident, Chernobyl dogs roam the abandoned buildings in and around the closed plant. Somehow they found a way to feed themselves.

Scientists are studying these dogs in hopes that they will teach humans how to live in the most hostile and degraded environments.

On Friday, they published the first of what they hope will be a long series of genetic studies in the journal Science Advances. The objects of study are 302 dogs that roam freely in the officially called “exclusion zone” at the disaster site. They identified populations whose different levels of radiation exposure could lead to genetic differences among themselves and with other dogs around the world.

“We had this golden opportunity” to lay the groundwork to answer a crucial question: “What do you do to survive in a hostile environment like this for 15 generations?” says geneticist Elaine Ostrander of the Institute. national research center on the genome. of the many authors of the study.

Another author, Tim Mousseau, a professor of biological sciences at the University of South Carolina, says dogs “provide an incredible tool for looking at the impacts of this type of environment” on mammals in general.

Chernobyl’s environment is particularly brutal. On April 26, 1986, an explosion and fire at the Ukrainian factory released radioactive fallout into the atmosphere. Thirty workers died immediately afterwards, and long-term mortality from radioactive poisoning is estimated at several thousand.

Researchers say most of the dogs studied appear to be descendants of pets that people were forced to abandon when they evacuated the area.

Mousseau, who has worked in the Chernobyl zone since the late 1990s, began taking blood samples from the dogs in 2017. Some dogs live inside the factory, an apocalyptic industrial environment. Others are between 15 and 45 kilometers (nine to 28 miles).

At first, says Ostrander, they thought the dogs would have mixed together so much that they would look alike, but the DNA allowed them to easily distinguish dogs from high, low and medium radiation areas.

“It was a big step for us,” adds Ostrander. “And what’s amazing is that we can identify families, about 15 different families.”

Now researchers can look for alterations in DNA.

“We can compare them and say, let’s see the differences, what’s changed, what’s mutated, what’s evolved, what helps you, what hurts you at the DNA level,” says Ostrander. To do this, it will be necessary to differentiate harmless modifications of DNA from useful modifications.

According to the scientists, the research could have many applications, providing clues about how humans and animals may live now and in the future in regions under “continuous environmental attack” as well as in the surrounding environment. high radiation from space.

Dr. Kari Ekenstedt, a veterinarian and professor at Purdue University who was not involved in the study, believes this is a first step in answering questions about how constant exposure to high levels of radiation affects large mammals. For example, ask, “Will this quickly change their genomes?”

Further work will require researchers to spend more time with the dogs at the site, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) from kyiv. Mousseau claims that he and his colleagues were there in October and saw no war. Mousseau says some members of the team have become friends with the dogs. One was named Prancer (Jumping) because it jumps around people when they get close.

“Even though they are free, they still enjoy interacting with humans,” he says. “Especially when the food appears.”

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