Secret about the tiny alien mummy from Chile has been revealed

Puzzles solved for the supposed alien

The immaculate skeleton of the alien creature was discovered in a leather pouch behind a deserted church in the Atacama Desert in Chile. The tiny creature is only six inches long and has a conical head, only ten pairs of ribs and bones that look like those of an eight-year-old child. The mummified being was first traded on the black market as an alien corpse and finally came into the hands of a Spanish trader. Now a forensic analysis was carried out, which solved the riddle of the little nerd.

The little creature was named "Ata". Scientists at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) and Stanford University have unequivocally proven that it is human. Ata has the DNA of a human woman with a mix of Native American and European ancestry. This mixture is typical of the location of the body. Nonetheless, the find is a scientific phenomenon because Ata has a handful of rare genetic mutations. Some of these mutations were first discovered on the body. The results of the analysis were published in the journal "Genom Research".

Ata is apparently a baby with rare mutations that died shortly before or shortly after birth. (Image: Bhattacharya S et al.)

Mutations caused the strange appearance

"The bioinformatics analysis in the study led to the discovery of new and rare harmful variants in the genes of the Ata phenotype," said Sanchita Bhattacharya, a bioinformatics researcher at the UCSF in a university press release on the study's findings. The analysis was very difficult due to the very limited amount of information about the specimen and the missing family history, making this a unique case.

Computer-aided analysis

The researchers used the so-called "Human Phenotype Ontology (HPO)", a database containing general genomic data aligned with the genes of the enigmatic corpse. In a first analysis, the scientists found 64 gene variants that were probably harmful. The comparison with the HPO database showed that most of the mutations had to do with the skeletal system. This resulted in dwarfism and the 10 pairs of ribs that were first observed in Ata.

Rare mutations

The results showed four first-time detected genetic mutations in the genes that cause bone disorders such as scoliosis or organ shifts. In addition, two other mutations involved in the production of collagen have been discovered.

Reverse order

The researchers report that they came to the results by using a backward-looking approach in the analysis. Instead of starting with a description of the disease and looking for a mutated gene, the scientists began to compare the entire genetic material of the "patient" with the database to see how it differs from a normal sample. The genetic variations that emerge from this comparison then showed in an unbiased way what these processes are.

Ata helps today's medical technology

"Analyzing an enigmatic sample like Ata's can teach us how to handle medical samples that are affected by multiple mutations," reports Atul Butte, director of the Institute for Computational Health Science at UCSF. When investigating the genomes of patients with unusual syndromes, there may be genetically more than one gene or path that is not always considered.

Ata was initially considered an alien

The first investigations on Ata were carried out by the microbiology and immunology professor Garry Nolan at the Faculty of Medicine of Stanford University. He received a phone call from a friend who said he might have found a real alien. "Nothing like that had been seen before," says Nolan.

Further research on Ata

Nolan believes that further research into Ata's premature aging may one day benefit patients. "Maybe there's a way to accelerate bone growth in humans," Nolan suggests. This could help people with bone diseases.

A funeral for little Ata?

Nolan hopes that one day Little Ata will receive a proper funeral. "We now know that Ata is a child and probably died either before or after birth," says Nolan. He advocates that Ata be brought back to the country of origin and buried according to the customs of the locals. (Vb)