
Elephants: Large, Long-Living and Less Prone to Cancer - grownseed
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/13/science/why-elephants-get-less-cancer.html
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meric
If larger animals had better cancer fighting weapons, then the largest animals
ever on the planet, the blue whale, being 15-25x larger, would have that much
better cancer fighting weapons. I wonder what those would be.

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iMerNibor
They do. Evolution.

They needed to evolve to reach a certain age ( -> once they cant reproduce
anymore) without dying to cancer.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMMPKJFYzdY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMMPKJFYzdY)
for a more in depth explaination

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iamcurious
_Experiments in which mice get extra amounts of p53 have shown that the
molecule has a downside: It can accelerate aging._

This bothers me. What exactly is the relationship between cancer and aging?

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JamesBarney
There is a theory that has substantial evidence that "senescence" the
technical term for aging is a defense against cancers. Here is a long article
about how cancer and senescence are related.[0]

[0][http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v448/n7155/full/nature0...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v448/n7155/full/nature05985.html)

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JoeAltmaier
Correlation, but what could the causation possibly be? Cancers and senescence
occur late in life, past the reproductive age. Doesn't that mean the
correlation cannot be selective?

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JamesBarney
The article goes into more depth but it's more than just the correlation that
aging and cancer both occur with age.

One neat thing the article brings up has to do with the p53 protein. People
who have only one functional copy of this enzyme have Li–Fraumeni syndrome.
Basically they get lots of cancer. On the other hand mice who over express the
p53 protein don't get any cancer but age more quickly than other mice.

There exists a similar dimension for telomeres. If you have to few you are at
higher risk for developing senescent related diseases. If you have too many
you're prone to cancer.

Basically a senescent cell has decided not to divide anymore because it has
determined it would be dangerous to do so. So many of the
enzymes/chemicals/genes that push these cells to continue to divide cure
senescence related illnesses but lead to higher risk of cancer.

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decisiveness
I wonder, exactly how might a cell "commit suicide"?

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fasteo
The medical term is "Apoptosis" and the Wikipedia article is a good intro to
this _very_ complex topic [1]

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apoptosis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apoptosis)

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untilHellbanned
_“All in all, it’s interesting, but the mechanism needs to be properly
investigated,”_

This is the type of academic bullsh@t that needs to stop. Of f@cking course
more research needs to be done but let these people have their moment for
advancing the field.

Life is literally too short to ruin it in this way.

