From: rokimoto557@gmail.com   
      
   https://abcnews.go.com/International/polar-bears-rewriting-dna-s   
   rvive-warming-arctic-study/story?id=128278604   
      
   https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s13100-025-00387-4   
      
   One population of polar bears in Greenland are showing higher   
   transposable element transcription than the other.  They think that this   
   means that the transposable elements are moving around the genome   
   because a lot of them are related to retrovirus that have an RNA   
   intermediate.  They haven't done the genome sequencing to determine that   
   more transposition is going on.  The highest level of transcription is   
   occurring in the population most stressed by higher temperatures.   
      
   They also make the claim that polar bears may be extinct by the end of   
   the century.  I don't know how they make these predictions.  More ice   
   melted last interglacial and sea levels were much higher than they are   
   now.  The polar bears survived somewhere, and it likely is not where   
   people currently inhabit.  We have to figure out where this habitat   
   existed last time so that polar bears can survive another interglacial.   
      
   If global warming skips the next ice age, there likely isn't any point   
   in trying to keep them alive except in zoos.  They need to be collecting   
   genetic samples to recreate a viable population a hundred thousand years   
   in the future when the ice age may start again.   
      
   Ron Okimoto   
      
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