The scientist who discovered why Snowflake was albino

In the laboratory of Tomàs Marquès Bonet coexist all kinds of monkeys and primates. Some are human; others are made of Lego pieces, origami, wood, crochet, plastic, and hang among shelves and computers full of the code that contains the essence of life. From a corner, Floquet de Neu, a unique accident in nature, observes the scene, attentive, and concentrates, better than any scientific article, the story of its owner, this Icrea researcher, professor, and chair at Pompeu Fabra University.

After all, life is written through accidents. Mutations that appear by chance, like the one that stripped the gorilla of its color. And encounters and decisions and deviations that shape a vocation. Marquès Bonet knows this well.

His father ignited his curiosity for nature. Then, in high school, fortune willed that he had a mathematics teacher who, in addition to teaching equations, was also one of the world's leading specialists in bat ecology, Jordi Serra Cobo. At 15 years old, Marquès Bonet was already accompanying him on censuses. And at 16, he spent an entire summer, alone and without a mobile phone, traveling through the Aragonese Pyrenees searching for the Pyrenean frog, discovered by Serra Cobo and one of the last vertebrates described in the Peninsula, which is still endangered today.

Another life accident: after studying biology, Marquès ended up at IBM, programming, until one day, years later, a friend told him about a position at Pompeu Fabra University to combine practical teaching in zoology and do a computational doctorate comparing the human genome with that of the chimpanzee. The boot and the lab coat. "There weren't many people who fit such a rare profile," he recalls. He applied, and the rest, again, is a succession of accidents.

The first, with a proper name: Floquet de Neu. Marquès's laboratory identified that he was white due to a not very common mutation in albinism and that, in addition, he was the son of uncle and niece, an exceptional case of inbreeding in these gorillas. That study placed Marquès on the international map of primate genomics research, but above all, it allowed him to learn to sequence and read primate genomes. Thanks to this, they were able to create the first catalog of mutations that differentiate humans from other great apes.

“We sequenced the entire genome of more than half of the world's primate species. And this allowed us to shed light on issues of biomedicine, human evolution, and diseases like cancer. Great apes can be excellent model animals for trying to better understand human diseases,” says this researcher.

And, almost without looking for it, a new derivative. His studies of primates led people from all over the world to ask him if he would be able to identify the place of origin of primates confiscated from illegal trafficking. Today, Marquès' laboratory is the only one in the world capable of geolocating great apes – for the moment, mainly chimpanzees and gorillas – with such precision that it can identify the country of origin, and even the natural park, from which they have been extracted. “We have become a kind of forensic CSI for wildlife,” he says with pride.

Now he hopes to reconstruct a map of illegal trafficking routes between Africa and Asia to protect these species and provoke political and social action. “As happened with mountain gorillas, if local populations see that it is more beneficial to protect them than to kill or traffic them, perhaps we will still have time to build a different future for great apes,” says this evolutionary biologist, who exudes passion and enthusiasm from all sides.

In his office, Snowflake remains impassive, a reminder of a scientific discovery and proof that, sometimes, an extraordinary mutation can end up changing many stories.