Apr 10, 2015 10:53 AM EDT By Russell Westerholm, UniversityHerald Reporter

With the threat of extinction looming, mountain gorillas have apparently resorted in inbreeding, though all hope is not lost.

According to Reuters, authors of a study published in the journal Science conducted one of the most exhaustive genetic reviews of the mountain gorilla to date. But one main issue that typically coincides with inbreeding was not prevalent among the gorillas.

"Mountain gorillas are among the most intensively studied primates in the wild, but this is the first in-depth, whole-genome analysis," study co-author Chris Tyler-Smith, of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, said in a press release. "Three years on from sequencing the gorilla reference genome, we can now compare the genomes of all gorilla populations, including the critically endangered mountain gorilla, and begin to understand their similarities and differences, and the genetic impact of inbreeding."

For their study, the researchers took blood samples from seven gorillas living in the forests of the Virunga volcanic mountain range. They estimated nearly 900 gorillas were living in the area that borders Rwanda, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

"This new understanding of genetic diversity and demographic history among gorilla populations provides us with valuable insight into how apes and humans, their closely related cousins, adapt genetically to living in small populations," study co-author Aylwyn Scally, a genetics professor at the University of Cambridge, said in the release. "In these data we can observe the process by which genomes are purged of severely deleterious mutations by a small population size."

The multi-institutional team of scientists included 23 authors on the study from six different countries, Reuters noted. While inbreeding is typically associated with lower resistance to disease and stunted development, the researchers found the gorillas in their study to suffer from these defects less than other populations.

"We worried that the dramatic decline in the 1980s would be catastrophic for mountain gorillas in the long term, but our genetic analyses suggest that gorillas have been coping with small population sizes for thousands of years," study lead author Yali Xue, of the Sanger Institute, said in the release. "While comparable levels of inbreeding contributed to the extinction of our relatives the Neanderthals, mountain gorillas may be more resilient. There is no reason why they should not flourish for thousands of years to come."

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