3 ms·
Do other large mammals have similar cancer resistance? How many cells does a blue whale have?
by ganzuul 7y ago
Do other large mammals have similar cancer resistance?
How many cells does a blue whale have?
- Jun8 7y agoAble to answer this since I just read an article on this in the Economist (https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2019/06/29/in-fighting-cancer-look-to-what-other-animals-do https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2019/06/29/...): It seems whale genes have evolved to supress cancer. These include ATR (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ataxia_telangiectasia_and_Rad3_related https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ataxia_telangiectasia_and_Rad3...) that senses DNA damade, AMER1 (https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/gene/AMER1 https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/gene/AMER1), which stifles cell growth, and RECK (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RECK https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RECK), which suppresses metastatis. These genes are also found in humans but the hope is that studying genes from animals like elephants and whales we can find ones that we don't have.
- cma 7y agoI always thought it might be because with a larger volume of blood, their adaptive immune system could contain more permutations of antibodies, allowing them to detect more cancers.