Comments on: The Only Known Cancerless Animal

By: Adam Daly

Adam Daly — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 20:36:00 +0000

Wow what a diverse blog. From robots to cancer free animals, nice. I was just watching a video from the Ted conference, that covered foods one can eat that are anti-androgenic in nature http://www.ted.com/talks/william_li.html. Really interesting stuff. We may not be able to be immune to cancer just yet (like the naked mole rat) but it appears that there are foods one can eat to decrease chances of getting cancer.

By: Peggy

Peggy — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 22:00:54 +0000

Unfortunately it’s likely to be much more complicated than the press release suggested (no big surprise there). Changing the expression of p16 in humans would likely change the expression of dozens of other proteins involved in the cell cycle. There has been a lot of study of p16 (also called Ink4a) in transgenic mice and in human and mouse cells that demonstrate the complexity of the cell cycle – increase the level of one component and the levels of the other factors can turn out to be either good or bad.

If you read the abstract of the paper (rather than the press release), it’s clear that mole rat cells are regulating cell division in a different way than mouse and human cells. Transferring the same characteristics to humans would require a lot more engineering than just changing the expression pattern of p16.

That’s not to say it couldn’t be done, just that it won’t be done until cell cycle regulation is much better understood!

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 19:42:51 +0000

This is pretty cool! This should be a headline in Science-related newsletters in educational institutions. This study does not only awakens scientific consciousness on the study of simple organisms but gives further idea that simple creatures can have as many amazing characteristics that have not been discovered yet, but can be useful to human.

By: dieren

dieren — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 21:34:03 +0000

Pretty interesting.. I’m not sure if I want mole rat DNA strains to prevent cancer.

By: Weekend miscellany — The Endeavour

Weekend miscellany — The Endeavour — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 03:49:43 +0000

[...] The only animal that doesn’t get cancer [...]

By: Sihastria

Sihastria — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 09:39:24 +0000

So if they could find a way to transfer the defensive system from the p16 gene to humans we would be cancer-proof right? But wouldn’t that interfere with the telomerase that helps us heal our wounds?
How can they go around that? Seems like a double-edged sword.