All other things being equal, more cells in the body undertaking more activity means a larger risk in any given period of time of one of those cells undergoing a cancerous mutation. Given this, larger and longer-lived species have necessarily evolved superior mechanisms of cancer suppression in order to avoid early death by cancer. The protein p53 is a cancer suppressor, produced from the gene TP53. Large mammals such as elephants maintain a low risk of cancer, despite having many more cells than smaller mammals, in part via having many copies of TP53 in the genome. It isn’t just copy number, however. The sequence of p53 varies in small ways from species to species, and researchers here show…
Correlations Between p53 Sequence Differences and Species Lifespan
All other things being equal, more cells in the body undertaking more activity means a larger risk in any given period of time of one of those cells undergoing a cancerous mutation. Given this, larger and longer-lived species have necessarily evolved superior mechanisms of cancer suppression in order to avoid early death by cancer. The protein p53 is a cancer suppressor, produced from the gene TP53. Large mammals such as elephants maintain a low risk of cancer, despite having many more cells than smaller mammals, in part via having many copies of TP53 in the genome. It isn’t just copy number, however. The sequence of p53 varies in small ways from species to species, and researchers here show…