Elephants Are Using The Zombie Gene To Resist Cancer

About 17 % of people die because of cancer nowadays. But elephants – who have similar lifespans and are much larger – only die because of cancer in 5 % of cases. That’s just not fair.

By designerpoint CC0 Creative Commons via Pixabay.com

But instead of being angry lets figure out why that is and use it to benefit humankind. That’s what research teams from the University of Chicago and from the University of Utah said to themselves three years ago. And they have discovered some interesting stuff.

We already knew for sometime that humans have two copies of the TP53 gene. This gene one of our bodies key protections against tumors as its product – the p53 protein – is part of the detection process for damaged DNA, helps repair it and also is part of the process of killing the cell when its DNA cannot be repaired anymore. That’s pretty much the whole packet when it comes to cancer prevention. And the team from Utah found that African bush elephants have at least 40 copies of the TP53 gene. That has a ginormous effect on how elephant cells work as they are much more responsive to DNA damage and kill themselves much more easily.

Meat Grinder zombie
By Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America (Meat Grinder zombieUploaded by MaybeMaybeMaybe) CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

The second team – from Chicago – recently discovered another amazing thing about elephants. They have an anti-tumor zombie gene that they resurrected. I know this sounds like a line from a B horror movie but it’s really true. When an organism evolves some genes get broken and stop working and then they become pseudo-genes and from the point-of-view of the organism they are dead. Even humans have many of these. For example, the famous GULOP pseudo-gene that is responsible for the fact that our bodies cannot produce vitamin C.

Very rarely such a gene comes back to life. Making it a zombie gene. The Chicago team discovered that a certain pseudo-gene leukemia inhibitory factor 6 (LIF6) came back to life in elephants. But this zombie is really useful. When this gene is activated by the p53 protein it makes another protein that quickly heads to potentially damaged cells and swiftly kills them by poking many holes into them. So while LIF6 is quite murderous it is only doing so for the good of the whole organism. A swift intervention will stop cancer from even being developed.

All of this is because elephants live long and are really big. That gives you a lot of evolutionary benefits. Only a very few predators can kill you and you get to care for your offspring preparing them for their life. But it also has problems. For example, a lot of tumors. That is why big and long lived animals had to evolve with a mechanism that will allow them to eliminate cancer cells. Those are always being created in our bodies and the larger the organism the more cancer cells. And the amount of TP53 genes and the resurrection of the LIF6 gene are exactly such mechanism. Maybe one day we will be able to alter our bodies to provide a similar level of protection.

Sources:

• https://news.uchicago.edu/story/zombie-gene-protects-elephants-against-cancer
• https://www.cell.com/cell-reports/abstract/S2211-1247(18)31145-8

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