New Research shows that Snowflake, the famous albino gorilla that lived for 40 years at the Barcelona Zoo, got his white coat as an offspring of inbreeding, according to reports.
Albinism is a syndrome marked by a lack of skin, eye and hair pigment. Humans with albinism are at high risk for vision problems and skin cancers because of the lack in pigment.
Snowflake was a male Western lowland gorilla born in the wild and captured in 1966 by villagers in Equatorial Guinea. He was the only known white gorilla in the world, until his death of skin cancer in 2003.
According to reports, scientists tried for years to pinpoint why Snowflake had a white coat. It was not until Spanish researchers sequenced the gorilla's entire genome that revealed Snowflake was likely to be the offspring of a pairing between an uncle and a niece.
Researchers led by Tomas Marques-Bonet of the Institut de Biologia Evolutiva at the University of Pompeu Fabra studied the ape's frozen blood.
"Comparing that sequence with those of humans and non-albino gorillas, Marques-Bonet and his colleagues narrowed down the cause of Snowflake's albinism to a single gene, known as SLC45A2," the Huffington Post reported.
Snowflake reportedly inherited a mutant form of SLC45A2 from both of his parents. This specific gene has been linked to albinism in mice, horses, chickens and a species of fish, according to the Huffington Post.
The research team also looked for stretches of DNA ins Snowflake's genome linked to inbreeding.
"They found that 12 percent of the genes from Snowflake's mom and pop matched, a number that points to an uncle and niece mating as the most likely parentage for Snowflake," the Huffington Post reported.
With habitat loss, gorillas may struggle to find a place to disperse from their original family, which could increase instances of inbreeding.
The scientist published their findings on May 31 in the journal BMC Genomics.
