It must be Cancer Tuesday
Below, I brought you the lung cancers breathalyzer.
Now, we have two intriguing studies about Mole Rats. Oddly, the two remotely related species have developed some tantalizingly similar adaptations to dealing with their subterranean existences which via the process of natural selection, make the small rodents almost entirely cancer free. One can imagine inducing tumor growth in laboratory conditions, hence the bit of a hedge.
The Blind Mole Rat appears to have a doubling of the genes that produce interferon beta-1, and a host of other adaptations.
The Naked-Mole-Rat appears to have a host of similar adaptive genes that enable both it and it's distant cousin to survive in very low oxygen environs without suffering all the typical ills of O2 deprivation.
That these adaptative changes both suit their hosts in their subterranean lives and appear to make it difficult to induce tumor development even when given oncogenic cocktails which prove lethal to mice is intriguing indeed. Since nature does little in the way of holding on to genetic material that serves no purpose, but ratchets up on beneficial mutations, it seems plausible that these long-lived rodents--which are neither moles nor rats--are retaining these genetic variations for manifold reasons. Plausibility does not in any way constitute fact, but once the tales of these two remarkable creatures get sorted out, don't be surprised if the low 02 and high CO2 adaptations stand quite alone from the genes that code for, and are expressed as cancer fighting battalions.
The world may yet yield to the 'misnomered' Mole Rats.
Now, we have two intriguing studies about Mole Rats. Oddly, the two remotely related species have developed some tantalizingly similar adaptations to dealing with their subterranean existences which via the process of natural selection, make the small rodents almost entirely cancer free. One can imagine inducing tumor growth in laboratory conditions, hence the bit of a hedge.
The Blind Mole Rat appears to have a doubling of the genes that produce interferon beta-1, and a host of other adaptations.
The Naked-Mole-Rat appears to have a host of similar adaptive genes that enable both it and it's distant cousin to survive in very low oxygen environs without suffering all the typical ills of O2 deprivation.
That these adaptative changes both suit their hosts in their subterranean lives and appear to make it difficult to induce tumor development even when given oncogenic cocktails which prove lethal to mice is intriguing indeed. Since nature does little in the way of holding on to genetic material that serves no purpose, but ratchets up on beneficial mutations, it seems plausible that these long-lived rodents--which are neither moles nor rats--are retaining these genetic variations for manifold reasons. Plausibility does not in any way constitute fact, but once the tales of these two remarkable creatures get sorted out, don't be surprised if the low 02 and high CO2 adaptations stand quite alone from the genes that code for, and are expressed as cancer fighting battalions.
The world may yet yield to the 'misnomered' Mole Rats.