Ah, the naked mole rat. Such a majestic creature, shown here languidly enjoying the fruit juice of his labors. Who knew that in such a simple creature, such wisdom lay?

I was just reading on Science Daily about some research that has been done. You see, the actual naked mole rat (a species who rarely if ever wear sunglasses) holds the rather unique designation as being an animal that is cancer-proof. It was long theorized that this was caused by their voraciously reading the works of Hulda Clark, but this research now ties to a particular gene, called p16.

What p16 does is quite unique. The author of the article describes it as claustrophobic, but the researchers put it another way:

When Gorbunova and her team began specifically investigating mole rat cells, they were surprised at how difficult it was to grow the cells in the lab for study. The cells simply refused to replicate once a certain number of them occupied a space. Other cells, such as human cells, also cease replication when their populations become too dense, but the mole rat cells were reaching their limit much earlier than other animals’ cells.

“Since cancer is basically runaway cell replication, we realized that whatever was doing this was probably the same thing that prevented cancer from ever getting started in the mole rats,” says Gorbunova.

I wonder if that’s why the buggers are hairless? Hair is made of fast growing cells, which is why chemotherapy attacks it. And I wonder if p16 would make it so I didn’t have to waste all that time shaving my head?

Jim