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Power Science

Chernobyl's Mutant Wolves Appear To Have Developed Resistance To Cancer (sky.com) 76

Posted by EditorDavid from the meanwhile-in-Ukraine dept.
"Mutant wolves roaming the deserted streets of Chernobyl appear to have developed resistance to cancer," reports Sky News, "raising hopes the findings can help scientists fight the disease in humans." Dr Cara Love, an evolutionary biologist and ecotoxicologist at Princeton University in the U.S., has been studying how the Chernobyl wolves survive despite generations of exposure to radioactive particles... The researchers discovered that Chernobyl wolves are exposed to upwards of 11.28 millirem of radiation every day for their entire lives — which is more than six times the legal safety limit for a human. Dr Love found the wolves have altered immune systems similar to cancer patients undergoing radiation treatment, but more significantly she also identified specific parts of the animals' genetic information that seemed resilient to increased cancer risk.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo for sharing the news.
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Chernobyl's Mutant Wolves Appear To Have Developed Resistance To Cancer More

Chernobyl's Mutant Wolves Appear To Have Developed Resistance To Cancer

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  • So those comics were right? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Sunday February 11, 2024 @05:33PM (#64232522)

    Exposure to radiation can give you superpowers?

  • Please do not pet the radioactive puppies [ifunny.co] of Chernobyl.

  • I, For One... (Score:5, Funny)

    by crunchygranola ( 1954152 ) on Sunday February 11, 2024 @05:37PM (#64232528)

    Welcome our radioactive mutant cancer-immune wolf overlords.

  • Resistant vs. Immune (Score:3)

    by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Sunday February 11, 2024 @05:43PM (#64232544)

    Careful. Many humans are "resistant" to cancer. We just don't know it because they die of something else. Most likely, if you make it to 80 without cancer you're resistant to cancer. Don't believe me? See this graph .. it shows the incidence of cancer out of 100,000 people in a particular age group. https://acsjournals.onlinelibr... [wiley.com]

    • How do you distinguish between "resistant to cancer" and "was lucky not to get cancer"? At some point there's just no sense testing/for treating cancer, no need for nasty biopsies and treatments if you're going to die of something else anyways.

      • Since many cancers kill within 5 years.. if you ignored the cancer there would be a spike in cancer incidents/deaths from the age most patients/doctors stop most screening (which is age 75 I think). Late stage cancer is not easy to ignore. "Don't mind the irregular bloody black splotches all over my face that's just melanoma."

        • Not at all. As an oncologist once said, most men above 70 die with prostrate cancer. But they do not die from prostrate cancer.

          • Prostate cancer, which is the second leading cause of male cancer death in the USA, is pretty slow progressing -- and somewhat of exception to what I said because it's so slow growing that it is often immune evasive until the all-hell-breaks-loose point.. but most men over 70 don't have it. Oncologists do say that lie to people with prostate cancer to make you feel good -- I mean it's correct that many who have it may die of something else, but it's false that "most men" over 70 have it. References: https:/ [cdc.gov]

  • Think of it as evolution in action (Score:4, Insightful)

    by nospam007 ( 722110 ) * on Sunday February 11, 2024 @05:43PM (#64232546)

    That's all I got.

    • Re:Think of it as evolution in action (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ThosLives ( 686517 ) on Sunday February 11, 2024 @06:14PM (#64232600) Journal

      Indeed - the wolves didn't "develop immunity" to cancer. It's more likely that wolves with genetic immunity to cancer were most likely to propagate, so that of the wolves that survive, they, well, have survival-bias toward cancer resistance.

      It's very unlikely that the radiation itself caused a mutation that made the wolves more resistant to radiation.

      • All the better, those wolves can be studied to find mammalian cancer resistance genes, many of which should be shared in common with humans. Worst case we can study the resistance mechanism.

      • That is the parsimonious interpretation. Conversely, who knows what other traits that unintended selective pressure might have caused. We truly are products of our environment.

      • Re:Think of it as evolution in action (Score:4, Interesting)

        by quantaman ( 517394 ) on Monday February 12, 2024 @01:01AM (#64233248)

        Indeed - the wolves didn't "develop immunity" to cancer. It's more likely that wolves with genetic immunity to cancer were most likely to propagate, so that of the wolves that survive, they, well, have survival-bias toward cancer resistance.

        It's very unlikely that the radiation itself caused a mutation that made the wolves more resistant to radiation.

        Not quite.

        Radiation (at least above a certain level) causes cancer, so around Chernobyl radiation induced cancer is a bigger cause of mortality (somewhat random since the radiation is somewhat randomly dispersed). Over time the wolves with fewer genes to resist that radiation induced cancer die young before breeding, the ones with more genes survive longer and have more offspring.

        The interesting question to me is if there's a trade-off.

        There's two reasons for an adaption not to get passed down, first because there's a trade off, for instance our bigger brains require more calories, that's not a good trade off for many animals. The second is the benefit isn't large enough to counter genetic drift. For example, we have the genes to produce vitamin C, but they're broken [oup.com]. Because our ancestors had enough vitamin C in their diets there wasn't a significant loss in fitness when the gene to make our own stopped working.

        So these anti-cancer genes in the wolves, are they causing the wolves some other downside that's outweighed by threat of the radiation, or were they simply never that useful before?

        • Re:Think of it as evolution in action (Score:4, Funny)

          by sabt-pestnu ( 967671 ) on Monday February 12, 2024 @01:14AM (#64233276)

          > are they causing the wolves some other downside that's outweighed by threat of the radiation... ?

          I would say that the anti-cancer genes could themselves be a downside. ... because it makes them more desirable for capture/attack by other predators ... like research assistants.

          Now if we tag the research assistants with glow-in-the-dark jeans, we might be able to study the predator-prey relations in greater detail.

        • It'd be easy for increased cancer resistance to coincide with increased autoimmune disease, it'll depend on the mechanism. It'll be interesting to see.

      • Exactly.
        And: I would not wonder if they changed eating habits.
        After all most of their prey is rather weak, as they suffer from the same radiation problems, or simply collapse somewhere and die.
        An example would be: they rather eat the next dead dear or boar instead of spending hours to eat the bone marrow.
        It is an interesting finding, but I guess to get a clue we have to catch some and tag them and observe them.

        • 'An example would be: they rather eat the next dead dear or boar instead of spending hours to eat the bone marrow.'

          Boars are the worst, they eat the mushrooms that store radioactive caesium, even today, about half the boars shot and half the wild mushrooms picked in Bavaria, Germany, are unfit for human consumption, after all these years.

      • Aside from the spider-man jokes, I'm confused as to who you think didn't understand that the original phrasing was specifically intended as a shorthand for people who already understand evolution.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by JoeRobe ( 207552 )

      which reminds me of this alarming demonstration from Harvard of evolution and developing resistance to things that should kill you:

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

  • oblig (Score:4, Funny)

    by kid_wonder ( 21480 ) <(public) (at) (kscottklein.com)> on Sunday February 11, 2024 @06:10PM (#64232598) Homepage

    In Soviet Russia cancer appears to have developed resistance against mutant wolves

  • Sounds like ... (Score:3)

    by PPH ( 736903 ) on Sunday February 11, 2024 @06:19PM (#64232606)

    ... a case of radiation hormesis [wikipedia.org].

  • This is kind of an obvious research avenue. Nature is really good as solving survival.

    • Is that why over 99% of species are extinct?

      • Short answer yes. Evolution requires death, you are not adapted to the environment you die.

        • Everything dies. Evolution occurs by reproduction of traits that can enable higher that rival reproduction rate before death.

        • Evolution does not require death it requires reproduction. If you had some sort of death-free physics eg where you could phase into alternate dimensions with infinite resources, evolution would work just fine. The things that reproduce more would still reproduce more and become exponentially more common, but not as quickly as with death deleting others from the gene pool.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Bert64 ( 520050 )

            Animals that live for a long time after having offspring are potentially a negative trait. Once their offspring are able to fend for themselves then the parents become competitors for the same resources.

      • Yet the planet has life thriving in every nook and cranny.

      • 99% of species were not the best solution to survive and propagate in their environment.

  • Humans resistant to cancer are prone to autoimmune disorders.

    • This is true to a first approximation.

      Vitamin D, in doses higher than usual in temperate climates (but well below toxic levels) has shown some promise in helping to regulate the immune system such that it better understands the difference between our own healthy cells on one hand, and cancerous and/or foreign cells on the other.

      Also, a lot of data show that exposure to soil and pets has a similar effect.

      An excessively sterile and indoor environment, especially at young ages, puts people at higher risk of bo

  • I might be more concerned with my resistance to Mutant Wolves.

  • 11.28 millirem per day is 4.1 rem per year. The limit is 5 rem per year, at least in the US.

    I just caught the idiot auto correct converting millirem to mermaids. Augmented Idiocy strikes again!

  • Sickle-cell disease stops malaria. If we had a massive outbreak of malaria, with very high death rate, and no medication or cure for it, then after a few generations we would have massively increased number of people with sickle-cell disease. Now move all these people away from malaria, and sickle-cell disease is a massive disadvantage.

    So whatever change has happened here through evolution, it apparently improves your chances of survival in areas with very high radioactivity, but not with normal amounts

  • This at least gives me hope that new life will arise from the radioactive ashes of our doomed civilization.

  • The others did not.

  • wolves have altered immune systems similar to cancer patients undergoing radiation treatment,

    That's not a mutation. That's an immune system response to exposure to radiation.

    but more significantly she also identified specific parts of the animals' genetic information that seemed resilient to increased cancer risk.

    That's not a mutation either. It's natural selection of one group with a more robust immune response to one that does not have it. The results of which would be a change in the relative populations of those with/without that gene. A mutation would be brand new genetics not previously seen in the species.

  • So maybe the 100 was a documentary just like Battlestar Galactica?

  • Where is the actual science? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Phronesis ( 175966 ) on Monday February 12, 2024 @12:29AM (#64233198)
    This is a news report that is not based on any peer reviewed publication, or even a preprint. It has no value. Until the researchers publish, we won't be able to look at their methods and data to figure out whether their result is credible.
  • do we have cancer only b/c we are "protected" from radiation that would have killed cancer cells?
    • No. Cancer cells are only more sensitive to radiation because they are growing more rapidly than your other cells. This is why cancer treatment makes you feel awful and makes your other rapidly dividing cells die, which can cause things like your hair falling out and digestive issues.

  • This will have been an evolutionary process. Humans try their best to avoid evolution at all cost. Hence, no.

  • One other thing (Score:3)

    by zeeky boogy doog ( 8381659 ) on Monday February 12, 2024 @05:24AM (#64233600)
    The linear-no-threshold theory of how harmful radiation is to people (which has led directly to both hysterical fear surrounding minimal radiation releases, such as the infinitesimally tritiated water at Fukushima - which is less radioactive than the seawater it's going into - as well as contributing to the ever skyrocketing cost of nuclear construction) is bullshit. It was "derived" by observing that the viability of plant seeds was inversely proportional to radiation dose - when the seeds were exposed to hundreds of thousands of rads of x-rays.

    There are parts of the world where the natural background radiation level is comparable to much of the Chernobyl EZ currently (excluding, obviously, things like the plant site itself, the Red Forest, etc) and people live there just fine, no mutant babies or crazy cancer rates.

  • Er, I learned years and years ago that low exposure to radiation was well known to kick human cells into an anti-cancer mode.

    And yes, Chernobyl is a low radiation area. HBO faked much of that programme to make it more interesting and sensational.

    The levels of radiation exposure are exceeded by many areas on the planet, where humans live eat and sleep every day. The world is radioactive and our cells have the means to deal with low levels.

    These wolves are just the descendants of the ones that were better a

  • The wolves have to glow and talk to you about responsibility.
  • This would be consistent with human medical surveys and studies in natural High Background Radiation Areas ( HBRAs ) around the world, like Yangjiang China, Kerala India and Guarapari Brazil, and Ramsar, Iran. From ( http://www.ecolo.org/documents... [ecolo.org] ):

    "Based on results obtained in studies on high background radiation areas of Ramsar, high levels of natural radiation may have some bio-positive effects such as enhancing radiation-resistance. More research is needed to assess if these bio-positive effects have any implication in radiation protection (Mortazavi et al. 2001). The risk from exposure to low-dose radiation has been highly politicized for a variety of reasons. This has led to a frequently exaggerated perception of the potential health effects, and to lasting public controversies."

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