Explains how rabbits adapted to survive myxomatosis

An unprecedented study of rabbit DNA spanning 150 years and thousands of miles has revealed the genetic basis for the animal's fightback - and ultimate triumph, against the deadly myxoma virus. The revelation of how rabbits evolved genetic resistance to myxomatosis through natural selection, comes as part of an international research collaboration, nearly seventy years after the lethal disease decimated species' populations of Australia, Britain and France. Using the latest technology, the team led by the University of Cambridge and CIBIO Institute in Porto, and including researchers at Oxford University, extracted DNA from nearly 200 rabbits dating from 1865-2013, including one owned by Charles Darwin. The scientists then sequenced nearly 20,000 genes to pinpoint mutations that have emerged since the myxomatosis pandemics of the 1950s. The study reveals that modern rabbits in Australia, the UK and France have acquired resistance to myxomatosis through the same genetic evolution. The team also found that this resistance relies on the cumulative impact of multiple mutations of different genes. Lead author, Joel Alves a postdoctoral research assistant at Oxford's School of Archaeology, said: 'We compared rabbits collected before the virus outbreak in the 1950s with modern populations that evolved resistance, and found that the same genes had changed in all three countries.