Resistance To Cancer
Naked mole rats appear to have a high resistance to cancer; cancer has never been observed in them. A potential mechanism that averts cancer is an "over-crowding" gene, p16, which prevents cell division once a group of cells reaches a certain size. Most mammals, including naked mole rats, have the gene p27 which does a similar task, but prevents cellular reproduction at a much later point than p16 does. The combination of p16 and p27 in naked mole rats cells is a double barrier to cell proliferation. Hypersensitivity to contact inhibition may be the reason for the cancer resistance of the naked mole rat.
Blind mole rats Spalax golani and Spalax judaei also appear to be immune to cancer but by a different mechanism.
Read more about this topic: Naked Mole Rat
Famous quotes containing the words resistance to, resistance and/or cancer:
“High treason, when it is resistance to tyranny here below, has its origin in, and is first committed by, the power that makes and forever re-creates man.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Growing older, I have lost the need to be political, which means, in this country, the need to be left. I am driven into grudging toleration of the Conservative Party because it is the party of non-politics, of resistance to politics.”
—Kingsley Amis (1922–1995)
“I’m beginning to believe that Killer Illiteracy ought to rank near heart disease and cancer as one of the leading causes of death among Americans. What you don’t know can indeed hurt you, and so those who can neither read nor write lead miserable lives, like Richard Wright’s character, Bigger Thomas, born dead with no past or future.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)