Now We Know Why The NIH Paid For Nalakrats Gene Mapping

[gusgold]

Turns out Gator Blood kills just about everything. In pic below Nal explains Gene mapping to daughter Lizarda

sun-sentinel.com/local/brow...

californiaherps.com/films/f...

Gus

[Hidden]

I want some of what your taking, Gus. What did they used to call it, "wake and bake"?

[ctarleton]

Folks have also wondered why big, long lived animals like Elephants don't get a lot more cancer, compared to smaller animals. The differential odds for DNA replication/repair mistakes for the number of cells involved over a lifetime should run into the billions, if comparing the gross numbers of cells, and dividing events of cells between, say, an Elephant and a Mouse, from birth to death.

Some research has looked at how Elephants may have evolved to have at least 20 copies (40 alleles), including 19 retrogenes (38 alleles) of TP53, which can inhibit the development of cancers (compared to, e.g., only 1 copy (2 alleles) of TP53 that normally occur in humans).

jamanetwork.com/journals/ja...

(On the other hand, maybe the Elephants would get more cancer if they were smoking cigarettes and scarfing down a couple of hundred cheeseburgers each day, too? Ha. Ha.)

I'd also wonder if something similar might exist in the genetic/immune systems of large whales.

Or might have existed in the largest of the dinosaurs, many millions of years earlier.

Charles