This is a pretty surprising discovery out of the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone which contains the site of the nuclear power plant (NPP) and the city of Chornobyl. Previously it was known that the dog population around the NPP was genetically different than the population of Chornobyl City located just 10 km away. Due to the site continuing to be radio active it has long been believed that this was due to radiation affecting and altering the dogs DNA. I mean after all that just makes sense.
What this study showed though is that might not be entirely the case here.
Previously, the team had analyzed genetic variants distributed across the genome and identified 391 outlier regions in the dogs that differed between the two populations. Some of these regions contained genes associated specifically with repair of DNA damage.