But the cells
of naked mole rats behave as if they are «claustrophobic», ceasing to divide much sooner than cells from other species.
The researchers also found that contact inhibition
in naked mole rats is controlled by two genes, p16 and p27, while in humans it is primarily controlled by p27.
As we said
about naked mole rats in our gallery of weird lab animals, you've got to be tough and talented if you're this ugly.
The researchers doused nociceptors
from naked mole rats and mice in acid, and found the strength of the pain signal passing through the NaV1.7 channels dropped by 42 per cent in mice, but by 63 per cent in the mole rats.
Other researchers say it's too early to say that
naked mole rats don't age, but they agree something very unusual happens in the animals and welcome the treasure trove of life history data revealed in the paper.
Rochelle Buffenstein, a physiologist who is now at the University of Texas Health Science Center, began
studying naked mole rats in 1980 and took a colony with her when she moved from South Africa to the United States in 1997.
Natural selection is powerful enough to explain how male hammerheaded fruit bats became flying trumpets, how oarfish came to look and move so oddly, how elephants developed their trunks and infrasound, even
how naked mole rat queens came to run their reproductive dictatorships.
They found that a dilute solution of
naked mole rat skin cells did start to proliferate, but stopped once the cells reached a certain, relatively low density.
It's almost impossible to
culture naked mole rat cells in the lab, which made Andrei Seluanov and Vera Gorbunova from Rochester University, New York, wonder if this might be linked to their ability to resist cancer.
And the ice borer itself was just a fantastic twist on a hardly more believable animal, the
Namibian naked mole rat, a nearly blind mammal that has a social structure like an ant's.
However it is that
naked mole rats manage to stay young and vigorous for so long, minimizing oxidative stress has little or nothing to do with it.
«I think this factor is part of an overall process or mechanism by
which naked mole rats maintain their protein quality,» study first author Karl Rodriguez, Ph.D., said.
That's not so special: social ants and bees have worker and soldier castes, and in colonies of the
adorable naked mole rats different individuals have different jobs too.
They reported that a factor in the cells of
naked mole rats protects and alters the activity of the proteasome, a garbage disposer for damaged and obsolete proteins.
When they compared the amino acid sequence of
naked mole rat protein, the researchers found that three of these protein building blocks were different from the rat version and one was also different from the same protein in other mole rats.
Gary Lewin, a neuroscientist at the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine in the Helmholtz Association in Berlin, began working
with naked mole rats because a friend in Chicago was finding that the rodent's pain fibers were not the same as other mammals».
When Gorbunova genetically
engineered naked mole rats so that they could not make HMM - HA, they became vulnerable to cancer, suggesting that the substance is a key to protecting them.
Earlier this year, a research team from the University of Rochester in New York identified a chemical in
African naked mole rats that seems to protect them against developing cancer.
The Zambian mole rat is related to the
famous naked mole rat, one of only two mammals to live in «eusocial» colonies: like honeybees and termites, a single queen does all the breeding and the others work to maintain the colony.
Stories on a comprehensive study of all the babies born in 1 year at small New Zealand hospital, and how
naked mole rats break a biological aging law
Biologists have discovered a gene that may
keep naked mole rats cancer - free, a finding they hope can have implications with humans.
If we can learn how to harness the glucose process that
naked mole rats use, we can help buy victims time while they're oxygen - deprived and get them to a hospital.
Of the many interesting facts
about naked mole rats, their long cancer - free life has puzzled researchers.
Ewan Smith and colleagues at the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine in Berlin, Germany, doused nociceptors
from naked mole rats and mice in acid, and found the strength of the pain signal passing through the NaV1.7 channels dropped significantly more in the mole rats.
The study was the first to analyze the life histories of thousands
of naked mole rats, and found that their risk of death doesn't go up as they grow older, as it does for every other known mammalian species.
In 2008, the studies led to the finding that
naked mole rats didn't feel pain when they came into contact with acid and didn't get more sensitive to heat or touch when injured, like we and other mammals do.
But
for naked mole rats, this drop of efficiency likely represents a good compromise, Lewin explains.
One man builds robots, another
studies naked mole rats, a third is a lion tamer and the fourth is a topiary gardener.
Here are a few of the interesting genomes scientists have sequenced, starting with one of the most recent:
the naked mole rat.
The naked mole rat is a remarkable creature — OK, it's downright freaky — that's said to look like a penis with teeth.
Last week, a research consortium posted the draft sequence of
the naked mole rat's genome online; further study may unlock the genetic clues to this unique animal's survival abilities.
As mammals go,
naked mole rats are one of the strangest.
In
both naked mole rats and mice, acid activated the channels.
In mice, the balance tips in favour of the acid signal making it to the brain — but in
naked mole rats the balance tips the other way and the pain signal dissipates.
In the world of animal models,
naked mole rats are the supermodels.
Now the secret behind
another naked mole rat trait — feeling no pain from acid — could help tackle the pain of arthritis.
These toothy beauties are less well - known than their fur - free cousins,
the naked mole rats, but don't deserve to be.
Pigeons, sea turtles, chickens,
naked mole rats and perhaps even cattle can detect the Earth's magnetic field, sometimes with astonishing accuracy
Claustrophobic cells Three years ago, Gorbunova was involved in another study that described the unusual way in which the cells of
the naked mole rat behave in the lab.
In the mammal world,
naked mole rats are the longest - living rodents.
To fake a photo of an ice borer that accompanied the hoax story, the magazine's art department Photoshopped a red - tinted trilobite onto the head of
a naked mole rat.
«We thought the blind - mole - rat cells would use the same mechanism as those of
naked mole rats,» says Gorbunova, «so the fact that they do not was a big surprise».
Buffenstein and others have established that
naked mole rats will live as long as 30 years, staying perfectly healthy for most of that time.