UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER, BRANDON VICKCancer often kills rodents, but naked mole-rats, which can live longer than 30 years, are not susceptible to the disease. A study published yesterday (June 19) in Nature suggests a mechanism for the phenomenon: a sugar in the spaces between naked mole-rat cells appears to lower the density of cell growth and prevent tumors from forming.
The protective substance, called hyaluronan (HA), is part of the extracellular matrix in many animals, but naked mole-rats produce large amounts of an HA variant that has a high molecular weight. Researchers discovered naked mole-rat HA’s unusual properties when they noticed that naked mole-rat cells in culture tended not to grow close together and were surrounded by a gooey substance that clogged the lab’s drains, Nature’s news site reported.
“Our lab technician was unhappy because she needed to disassemble the system and clean all this gooey stuff,” Andrei Seluanov, a professor at the University of Rochester in New York and an author of the paper, said to Nature. “I told my graduate student that we have to find out what the gooey substance is—it should ...
