Health
Researchers complete largest compilation of cancer incidence across vertebrates
Despite its prevalence and research efforts, cancer remains a mystery. Why are some animals more susceptible to infection than others? This is the question at the heart of Peto's paradox: large animals, by virtue of their cell numbers, are statistically more susceptible than small animals. The observation is that although people are more likely to develop and accumulate genetic mutations that cause cancer, they actually do not. In fact, some large animals, such as whales and elephants, get far fewer cancers than would be expected for an animal of their body size and cell count.
Amy Boddy, an anthropologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and her colleagues are working to gain insight into the mysteries of this and other cancers. The culmination of 10 years of work has resulted in a summary of cancer incidence rates in 292 vertebrate species, including amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals.
The wide-ranging investigation into cancer incidence, the largest study of its kind, could give researchers an opportunity to explore strategies for better cancer resistance. Which is least likely to develop a tumor that can lead to cancer? Finless porpoise and black-footed penguin. Which is most likely? ferrets and opossums. But these are outliers, the most extreme cases.
“What really became clear as we started collecting data is that everything can cause cancer,” said Boddy, a biologist, evolutionist, and co-author of a new paper published in the journal . cancer discovery. “It's about being a multicellular organism. No one is completely protected.”
In fact, according to the paper, cancer “is a multicellular problem.” The advent of multicellular organisms opened the door to the complexity of different types of cells coexisting and communicating with each other. However, with this complexity comes vulnerabilities in the form of genetic mutations that can cumulatively lead to the uncontrolled tissue growth that is a hallmark of cancer.
Having such an extensive dataset allows researchers to control for a variety of factors across species. In one case, we encountered a slight limit to Peto's paradox. That is, when controlling for gestational age, adult weight was correlated with cancer prevalence, but this association has not been observed in previous small studies of cancer prevalence. But Boddy is careful to point out that the effect is “very small” and not enough to disprove the paradox.
On the other hand, in support of Peto's paradox, animals with longer gestation periods and larger bodies tend to have fewer cancers. The researchers hypothesize that vertebrates with longer gestation periods may invest more resources to avoid mutations.
“Larger, longer-lived species invest more in maintaining their body cells,” Boddy says. “I would expect them to be better protected against cancer, because they have to do that to grow big and live long. From an evolutionary perspective, this actually means is not a contradiction.”
How people avoid cancer likely depends on the strategies each species has developed over its evolutionary history.
“Cancer is evolutionarily very old and is under constant selective pressure,” Boddy says. Animals and cancer have long evolved in opposition to each other. Boddy explained that as animals develop into different species, they experience different genetic trade-offs and need to adopt different strategies. One well-known strategy is that of elephants, which have 20 copies of the tumor suppressor gene P53. Other strategies include lowering the somatic mutation rate, which may slow the accumulation and development of these mutations into cancer.
“That's also why we don't find a common pattern across vertebrates, because each species has its own story about how it needs to protect against cancer,” Professor Boddy said. said.
Another benefit of this data is that it has the potential to expand options in cancer research, she added. Although research tends to focus on rodent models, animals that more naturally develop cancer and those that tend to develop different types of cancer are of interest to cancer and rare disease researchers. May provide better data.
The next step for The Body Lab is to look beyond species to specific types of cancer. “Cancer is not a single disease,” she said. “It's like 300 different diseases.” They are trying to find out, for example, whether other members of the primate family get the same types of cancers as humans. They are also interested in the mechanisms underlying cancer development in species with high cancer prevalence.
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Sources 2/ https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/10/241025122827.htm The mention sources can contact us to remove/changing this article |
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