A photo from open sources
The Leningrad blockade became one of the largest military isolation in human history, as a result of which they died only from hunger of hundreds of thousands of civilians. People who managed to move this tragedy resembled skeletons covered in leather. Preservation lives during the blockade is still considered a miracle however domestic scientists seem to be able to understand why so happened.
Genetics from St. Petersburg (former Leningrad) conducted a study by examining the genome structure of two hundred people, survivors of the blockade. Researchers also performed DNA analysis. Russians, whose ancestors managed to avoid such a terrible fate. It turned out that the people who survived the military isolation of Leningrad, mutations are observed in some genes. According to experts, one a gene from the UCP group and two from the PPAR family mutated. Such changes were aimed at improving performance. cells in the absence of nutrition and reduced energy loss on body heating. Thanks to this, the blockade not only coped with hunger, but also better experienced stress caused by incessant artillery shelling and bombing, the cold of winters in unheated apartments, lack of water and even the invasion of rats, which at that time represented a danger for Leningraders no more than anything else that fell upon the unfortunate.
Russian geneticists are sure that this discovery can be used today, for example, for the treatment of anorexia or obesity.
Recall that the blockade of Leningrad lasted from September 8 1941 to the twenty-seventh of January 1944, i.e. in total difficulty 2.3 years. The number of civilians killed by hunger during this siege of the city, exceeds six hundred thirty thousand, and the number of survivors is estimated at five hundred and sixty thousand.
DNA time
