How Underground Rodents Ward Off Cancer!
November 6, 2012
Rodents Ward Off Cancer

Three years ago, in the university of Rochester, biologist found that the naked mole rat had certain mechanisms that made it cancer resistant. Now, in 2012, they find that the Blind-Mole rat also wards off cancer, but the mechanisms from these 2 underground rodents, differ.

Blind mole rats and naked mole rats, are both subterranean mammals that are the only animals known to man that have never developed cancer. Three years ago, Gorbunova and Seluanov, two biologists at the University found the cancer-resistant mechanism in a naked mole rat. Their conclusion was that the animals had a specific gene that make the cancerous cells in naked mole rats hypersensitive to overcrowding and stops them from proliferating when too many crowd together.

They believe that the anti-cancer mechanism is an adaptation to subterranean life. Gorbunova said "Blind mole rats spend their lives in underground burrows protected from predators. Living in this environment could perhaps afford to evolve a long lifespan, which includes developing efficient anti-cancer defenses"

This article interested me because I see so many people suffering from cancer, and even dying from it. When I saw this article saying that some mammal evolved an anti-cancer mechanism, it caught my attention because I didn't think this to be possible.

I connect this article with my life for two reasons. One is that in biology we're learning about cells and Mr. Wilkinson did mention information about cancer cells. I found it very interesting, and this blog talked about the anti-cancer mechanism, and I found it very interesting. An other connection I can make is that, around 10 years ago my uncle was diagnosed with cancer. The doctor gave him 3 months of life and he is still alive. Thats why I thought this article was so interesting, because we finally found a defense mechanism against this horrible disease.

I find that its Health, Human Ingenuity, and Environment. Health, because many people have been affected by cancer, and it has been so severe as to cause death. Human Ingenuity because the biologist at the university started thinking and found that these rodents have a very long life span and are not known to have cancer, and they tested it out, and found out this mechanism and Environment, because they believe that something in the rodents life style triggered it to adapt, creating this anti-cancer defense mechanism.