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Contact: Lee Siegel
leesiegel@ucomm.utah.edu
801-581-8993
University of Utah
Caption: A packrat, also known as a woodrat, from the Great Basin of Utah is surrounded by mildly toxic juniper leaves that make up much of its diet. When climate warming eliminated juniper trees from what is now the Mojave Desert between 18,700 and 10,000 years ago, packrats there had to eat much more toxic creosote bushes, which replaced juniper. A University of Utah study has scanned the genetic blueprint of packrats from the Great Basin and the Mojave, and has narrowed to 24 candidate genes the search for genes that produce enzymes allowing Mojave packrats to eat poisonous creosote resin.
Credit: Denise Dearing, University of Utah
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