
Second contagious form of cancer found in Tasmanian devils - randomname2
http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/second-contagious-form-of-cancer-found-in-tasmanian-devils
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deftnerd
Man, the Tasmanian devils just can't get a break.

The link notes that only two other species have been known to have
transmissible cancers. Dogs and soft-shell clams. The fact that devils now
have a second form of transmissible cancer makes the researchers wonder if
transmissible cancers might be less rare than expected or that something in
the devils DNA makes them more susceptible to cancer than other creatures.

I just did some casual research, and it turns out that there are four known
types of transmissible cancers. The other known one is a contagious cancer
found in Syrian hamsters that's spread by mosquito bite.

That's the most interesting one I've heard of.

A good rabbit-hole starting point on this is
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clonally_transmissible_cancer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clonally_transmissible_cancer)

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yincrash
I suspect that in these animals, there gene diversity is quite low. Most
humans cannot even share blood with one another, let alone cancers because our
immune systems doesn't like things that are too different than our own cells.
I suspect cancer from a twin could be more easily transmissible than one from
a stranger.

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pecanpie
Yep, they're not very diverse at all, which, as you've suspected, is probably
what makes them more susceptible to the transmissable cancer:
[http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jul/02/science/la-sci-
tazma...](http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jul/02/science/la-sci-tazmanian-
devil-dna-20110702)

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dang
Url changed from [http://www.business-standard.com/article/pti-stories/new-
con...](http://www.business-standard.com/article/pti-stories/new-contagious-
form-of-cancer-discovered-115122900345_1.html), which appears to be a more
original source.

