Researchers suspect that elephants hold the key to defeating cancer.
Despite having far more cells capable of transforming into tumors, they are five times less likely to die than humans.
Giant mammals benefit from having 40 copies of a cancer-destroying gene known as p53. Humans have only two things.
Genes can stop working in certain cases, but experts at the University of Oxford and Edinburgh have figured out how the elephant’s extra DNA doesn’t prevent this from happening.
They found that each set of p53 was slightly different, so it was much less likely to be inactivated in elephants.
“This shows how important it is for us to study as well as preserve this characteristic animal in detail,” said Professor Fritz Vollrath of Oxford, Director of Save Elephants.
“After all, their genetics and physiology are both driven by their evolutionary history and by today’s ecology, diet and behavior.”
The findings, published in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution, may help lead to better cancer prevention.
Professor Robin Fåhraeus, a fellow researcher at the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research in Paris, said:
“In humans, the same p53 protein plays a role in determining whether a cell should stop proliferating or enter apoptosis. [death] However, it is difficult to explain how p53 makes this decision.
“The fact that several p53 types with different abilities exist in elephants… It provides an exciting and novel approach that opens up new insights into the tumor suppressor activity of elephants.”