24 ms·

So have cancer cells... in fact I believe that's the problem.

• verdverm 3y ago
  Cell division is imperfect, pretty much impossible to avoid mutation and loss over the lifetime of an organism. This compounds over time and is the reason most cancers are later in life
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • postalrat 3y ago
    Many animals seem resistance to cancer. Including big animals like whales where you'd think if was simply statistics on cell division they would be more likely to get cancer.
    • esturk 3y ago
      But size/height does play a role in humans. For example, shorter people tend to live longer average lifespans.[1] [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12586217/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12586217/
    • verdverm 3y ago
      they seem to have evolved a defense against tumors to quell the growth, but can still get it, and through some skimming of research, it seems to show that most species end up with the same amount of mutations by end of life, so adjusted for different lifespans, or different mutation rates per species
    • stubish 3y ago
      Some studies indicated this resistance was tied to the amount of redundancy in DNA. https://elifesciences.org/articles/21864 https://elifesciences.org/articles/21864 talks about how elephants have 20 versions of the tumor suppressor gene TP53. So it is statistics, and some animals evolved defenses.