Beijing, May 13 (EFE).- A rare brown panda bear was sighted for the first time in six years in the Qinling Mountains, in the Chinese province of Shaanxi, state media reported Monday.
This is the first time a brown panda has been observed in the area since 2018, and the 11th in total since its first sighting in 1985, Chinese state news agency Xinhua reported.
The animal was recorded by an infrared camera on Jan. 17 in the Changqing National Nature Reserve in the Qinling Mountains, the country’s forestry department said.
The Qinling Mountains brown panda subspecies is extremely rare, with an estimated population of only 20 individuals.
It was first discovered in 1985 in that same area, and all recorded photographs of wild brown pandas have been taken in this region.
In March, a study led by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and published in the journal PNAS indicated that a genetic mutation gives brown pandas their particular coloration.
The investigation confirmed that a homozygous deletion in the Bace2 gene is responsible for this mutation.
The researchers analyzed the genome and family history of two brown pandas, as well as biological samples from 227 pandas in total.
The analysis revealed that the two brown pandas shared a homozygous deletion in the Bace2 gene, which was not present in the other pandas studied.
To confirm the effect of this mutation, the researchers used the CRISPR-Cas9 technique to introduce the same deletion into mice.
The resulting mice also had a brown-white coloration, confirming that the mutation in the Bace2 gene is responsible for the unusual coloration in these pandas. EFE
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