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Elephants’ secret to their low rates of cancer might be explained in part by a so-called zombie gene—one that was revived during evolution from a defunct duplicate of another gene. In the face of DNA damage, elephant cells fire up the activity of the zombie gene LIF6 to kill cells, thereby destroying any cancer-causing genetic defects, researchers report in Cell Reports today (August 14).
“From an evolutionary biology perspective, it’s completely fascinating,” Joshua Schiffman, a pediatric oncologist at the University of Utah who was not involved in the work, tells National Geographic.
The better-known LIF gene has a number of functions in mammals, including as an extracellular cytokine. In elephants, LIF is duplicated numerous times as pseudogenes, which don’t have the proper sequence to produce functioning transcripts. For the latest study, the researchers wanted to see whether the duplications might have anything to do with elephant ...
