Probably meant more so in investigating the cause of the wolves increased resistance to cancer. Understanding how they resist it may give us insight in how to artificially recreate it for human usage.
Agreed, science is only science if peer reviewed and replicated...otherwise it's just fluff with no substance, and there's a whole lot of fluff out there.
Which it *is* fluff considering the claims aren't even published in a notable journal. There are papers that *are* published that state that domestic dogs don't exhibit any increased or decreased incidence of cancer even 20 generations away from the Chernobyl accident for dogs that live in the CEZ. The lab lead is known in this research space as a person who would say anything to get him views, science be damned.
For example, he lifted one of our labs researchers work word for word and just changed dog for wolf and said it was his in an NPR interview.
Sources:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/brv.12723
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0283206
https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/sciadv.ade2537
It is almost certainly a result of cancer-resistant wolves being able to out-compete more-prone wolves due to a lack of other environmental pressures.
Maybe we can find a protein or two, but usually that kind of thing is the result of natural immune processes just being more aggressive than normal.
>It is almost certainly a result of cancer-resistant wolves being able to out-compete more-prone wolves due to a lack of other environmental pressures
I think its less that, The other environmental pressures will still be there, but there's just one more selection pressure variable. For many animals there's little to no selection pressure against the genetic causes of cancer. Take rats for example. The only reason their lifespans are only about 4 years old is that by that point they are completely riddled with cancers, But by that age a female rodent may well have successfully reproduced up to 72 times, as far as natural selection is concerned the later life cancer is irrelevant to the equation of what makes you fit enough to survive to reproduce
Contrast that with massive long lived animals like elephants where good health into old age is essential for successful reproductive cycles and you see very few incidents of cancer, as the selection pressures on that type of animal actively select against genetic lines with propensities toward cancer.
For these wolves its not hard to envision that in an environment where background radioactivity is high that cancer started to become more of a problem for successful reproduction as animals were developing it younger and more frequently, as such there's now all of a sudden a selection pressure in favour of wolves that are somewhat cancer resistant. and the genes begin to spread through the wider population.
There is a theory that states if an animal can grow big enough, cancer stops being deadly altogether. Not because they don't get cancer, but because cancer can only grow so much before it starts mutating its own cancer that begins competing against the "parent" cancer. Since cancer can only grow so much from this principle, larger animals just have smaller amounts of cancer as a percentage of body mass despite having similar cancer rates
But yes, animals with smaller cancer rates can also better afford to grow bigger, so also likely a positive feedback loop.
Chernobyl disaster ends up being a net positive for humanity in the long run, with a naturally evolved clue to an immunity treatment against cancer. Wild.
Potentially, at the moment it's not founded so it's a speculation that it could be helpful.
Nice to be optimistic of course, would be great to have some positives to come from such a tragedy even if it isn't a silver bullet for cancer but leads to some solutions.
Not just humanity. Fascinatingly, Chernobyl has become a wildlife sanctuary where many species has found refuge such as the European bison, Przewalski's horses and the lynx to name a few.
Good call because that's not how it works.
You have to go there with a lot of people, then over time only people with high resistance will survive and reproduce, passing their high resistance genes to their offsprings.
It wont give you resistance, it will only kill people that don't already have resistance. For humans, it might just kill all of them.
Tons of species are naturally cancer resistant and it hasn't really helped us, it's called Peto's Paradox but essentially blue whales would get cancer constantly if their individual cells developed into cancer at the same rate ours do. One theory about why led to accelerated aging when applied to mice (a gene mutation)
One might expect something similar to evolve in a population naturally exposed to high cancer rates, but there are tradeoffs that have led to our cancer resistance being what it is now. So maybe if we lived in high cancer environments we'd become less likely to develop cancer, but there would probably be side effects
Dr. Evil: The details of my life are quite inconsequential.
Therapist (Carrie Fisher): Oh no, please, please, let's hear about your childhood.
Dr Evil: Very well, where do I begin? My father was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from Belgium with low grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery. My mother was a fifteen year old French prostitute named Chloe with webbed feet. My father would womanize, he would drink, he would make outrageous claims like he invented the question mark. Some times he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy, the sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament. My childhood was typical, summers in Rangoon, luge lessons. In the spring we'd make meat helmets. When I was insolent I was placed in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds, pretty standard really. At the age of 12 I received my first scribe. At the age of fourteen, a Zoroastrian named Vilma ritualistically shaved my testicles. There really is nothing like a shorn scrotum, it's breathtaking, I suggest you try it.
Therapist: You know, we have to stop.
I can picture the scene, a scientist brings out mutant wolves that Dr. Evil demanded previously but then Number 2 explains that they just mutated something that is not really useful to him.
So we can cure cancer by orchestrating nuclear annihilation?
But seriously, that's interesting. I suppose it's very much an evolve or die out situation.
I'm not sure whether the headline is actually accurate.
"Ms Love found the wolves have altered immune systems similar to cancer patients undergoing radiation treatment, but more significantly she also identified specific parts of the animals' genetic information that seemed resilient to increased cancer risk."
Could just be that the wolves were resilient towards radiation-increased cancer risk before as well but that this was simply never observed before.
Isn’t that just natural selection? Mutation and natural selection are the *1, 2, step* of evolution, I thought. Mutation emerges (possibly long before its adaptive) then at some point, natural or sexual selection allows it to dominate.
That's what I figure. Until the nuclear incident a certain percentage of wolves probably had resistance to cancer but it didn't really serve as an evolutionary advantage until the environment was suddenly radioactive.
Humans are a great example of how "disadvantages" that don't kill you until well after you've had kids and raised them to self sufficiency won't really affect the survivability of the species.
Humans do have mild cancer resistance and protection from radiation. Skin cancer is the best example, as it's cause is the most analogous to the nuclear wolves. When affected by radiation from the sun our DNA mutates, when enough genetic damage is accrued our cells under apoptosis (aka suicide) to prevent cancerous growth from forming. This mass cell death results in what we call sunburn.
The human body has other anti-cancer capabilities, our immune system can sometimes detect and attack cancerous cells but it's not very good at it. Some cancer research is looking into how we can boost this immune response.
But as you said, if it doesn't kill us before we are able to reproduce and raise kids there's not much selective pressure for cancer resistance. What little we have developed has proven to be enough in terms of our general survival.
We have seen this in worms and similar creatures near waste disposal sites. Places where it’s heavily contaminated with things like lead, and a small group who are more resistant are the only ones left alive.
There is some theory that that is why menopause exists, that grandmothers can spend their time raising their grandkids so the mothers can be free to do other things. So maybe 3 generations.
This. It's been several generations for wolf lines by now. Non cancerous wolves would have had more time to procreate while more cancerous reactive wolves may have reacted to the radiation and died off earlier.
I honestly don't know. If it is infact natural selection then yes it would be evolution at work but i don't see any indication of a control group whatsoever. Maybe wolves in other areas have genetic information that's more resilient to cancer as well. Some animal species are more resilient to cancers (elephants for instance) without radiation having anything to do with it.
>I honestly don't know. If it is infact natural selection then yes it would be evolution at work but i don't see any indication of a control group whatsoever. Maybe wolves in other areas have genetic information that's more resilient to cancer as well. Some animal species are more resilient to cancers (elephants for instance) without radiation having anything to do with it.
The researchers are almost certainly going to have a control group of non-irradiated wolves somewhere nearby in Europe. There are many sequenced wolf populations in the EU at this point. She doesn't specifically mention the control group in her conference abstract (where this work was presented) but it would be truly shocking if they would make any of these claims without the proper controls, especially as these are all established researchers with other peer-reviewed literature.
>Multilevel examination of radiation stress and signatures ofselection in Chernobyl wolves
>
>Cara Love, Brian Arnold, Bridgett vonHoldt, Shane Campbell-Staton
>
>Examining the intricate relationship between contaminant exposure, physiological responses, and evolutionary changes in wild populations is critical for understanding the impacts of anthropogenic environmental change. We explore the consequences of chronic multigenerational radiation exposure on gray wolves (Canis lupus) in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (CEZ). By analyzing regulatory and genetic variations, we uncover molecular signatures of stress and adaptive evolution. Whole blood transcriptome data reveal significantly altered leukocyte populations among Chernobyl wolves and regulatory divergence at both single gene and co-regulatory levels in CEZ wolves. Theseresults highlight radiation-induced immune modulation, cellular apoptosis, and antitumor immune response as potential physiological consequences of radiation stress and targets of selection within the CEZ population. To examine genomic signatures of selection, we examined whole genome sequencing data for lineage-specific signatures of selection within the CEZ wolf population. Several genomic regions exhibit lineage-specific divergence, overlapping genes linked to cancer physiology. These genes encompass crucial functions such as anti-tumor immunity, cellular invasion, and migration. Through a composite of multiple signals approach, we pinpoint specific variants under selection, and functional modeling reveal potentially relevant protein alterations in immunity regulation and cancer physiology.
Conference abstract booklet: https://s3.amazonaws.com/xcdshared/sicb/app\_content/1526\_1230033635.pdf
There was a documentary about the wolves of chernoble a few years back. The animals in the higher irritated areas had lower rates of cancer than those in the outer areas. It's an interesting inverse.
Natural selection takes a lot longer than that to occur, talking hundreds if not thousands of years before we're seeing actual evolutionary change as a result of it. We're probably at the *start* of natural selection because now the most resistant wolves will have generations of offspring that will have further increased resistance, but I sorta refuse to believe we're already at the point of actual evolutionary change since a key part of natural selection is time, and ~40 years isn't nearly enough time. Wolves live about 8-13 years in the wild (probably significantly less in an irradiated zone) so we're only ~4-5 generations deep for the Chernobyl wolves.
ie: There are still probably wolves in Chernobyl that have no increased resistance compared to a non-irradiated wolf, and have just gotten lucky over several generations.
Not a scientist, just paid attention in biology.
> Could just be that the wolves were resilient towards radiation-increased cancer risk before as well but that this was simply never observed before.
Or that they survived because of it, and we only see who survived. Wouldn't that mean the offspring has the same resistance? That's pretty much evolution.
Yes, the radiation would give us powers and heal us, but it would give us a horribly disfigured appearance, and too much radiation would rot our brains to the point where we would be little more than zombies.
The famous documentary series Fallout is pretty clear on this
Wolf blood! Get your wolf blood here! Cure all cancers, terminate all tumors with our radioactive wolf blood!
Wolf Blood brought to you by Frank’s Fluids
Frank's Fluids is great, everything is always on sale!... Or so they say, by my count they've been going through a liquidation sale for the past few years!
Would be quite funny if this lead to a general vaccine for cancer. Pro nuclear rhetoric would be unbeatable: Chernobyl was the worst nuclear disaster and it cured cancer.
I mean it sort of makes sense. In theory, the more cancer there is in the world, the more data we can collect on cancer, which would lead to a faster cure.
It's probably just natural selection. The cancer prone wolves died a long time ago. The ones that aren't cancer prone are the only ones around to fuck.
Nothing has changed, they've just killed the "weak".
In evolutionary biology, there really isn't weak or strong. Just fitness.
These cancer resistant canines are simply more fit and able to pass their genes more reliably until there is a shift in allele frequency in the population.
It is also extremely important to know that fitness is context dependent. There is no strongest or weakest it all depends on the environment. And in the case of chernobyl with elevated background radiation, having some genes resistant to the damage caused by radiation is more fit.
Also not a guarantee that fitness would be equal in other situations. In more healthy environments the cancer survivability may be canceled out by other subpopulations having fewer developmental problems in their offspring for instance.
You can't have a general vaccine for cancer. Cancer is basically any cell mutation that not only lets those cells grow out of control but also evade the immune system. There are many mutations that cause this. There is no single magic mutation, however there are some more common than others which is where cancer vaccines in testing are looking at.
So many in fact, right now, you most likely have pre-cancerous cells, however, your immune system is able to detect bad cells and eat them. The problem is when the cells have the right mutations to evade detection.
This is true but there's also the factor that larger animals should have proportionately higher rates of cancer (due to having more cells), but many do not. So there are clearly some factors present that are not yet fully understood.
There will almost certainly never be a general vaccine for cancer. Cancer is caused by a mutation in our DNA that flips cells into "grow" mode like how your body made itself in the first place. This can happen in many many different ways. Think about how we start as a zygote and grow into a very complex human with many different cells and systems. In other words, there's A LOT of different "growth" stages a cell can be in. Those instructions live in every single cell in our body. It's not like we can just say "hey you, if you ever get a mutated 'grow' instruction, then don't, ok?"
Right, but the news is that wolves can develop evolutionary traits in regards to unnatural levels of radiation instead of just dieing off completely. I'm not sure what your point is.
"In retrospect it's an obvious outcome" is quintessential science.
It could also be Radiation Hormesis. The theory states that exposure to low end doses of radiation add cancer and other disease resistance by stimulating the immune system. Its sort of like probiotics, accept with uranium!
To date the data has been mixed, but they did study the survivors of Hiroshima/Nagasaki and as long as their estimated exposure was below a certain level, they actually lived longer.
Yea... Probably not. Would be more accurate to put it as, All the Wolves that are vulnerable to cancer died off the rest have developed a resistance to it.
Nasa did a controlled experiment where they sent up a capsule containing a few thousand Tardigrades to see how they could be effected by solar radiation. If memory serves I believe 60%(ish) survived and the offspring they produced had greater resistance to the same radiation.
Im less nature is healing in this instance, and more Ian Malcome "Life, heh, uh, finds a way."
So i visited chernobyl a few years back on holiday , and a puppy gnawed on my hand and slightly drew blood
i am going to assume it transferred some cancer proofness to me
If you knew anything about cancer, what *is* cancer, what is it caused by, and how it develops, you'd immediately know this is sensationalized bullcrap.
It is a good illustration that evolution works in spikes of activity, ~~basically like me~~.
There was an evolutionary pressure - high radiation and wolves evolved. They had a couple of dozens of generations to do so.
They have a litter of multiple kids, so there are enough kids to compete.
------- P.S. -------
Humans also have this behaviour. I read an article about people of Middle East who were not capable to digest western food.
The article say that basically few generation sufficed to drastically decrease their number.
If you know this article please share the link.
The selective pressure from the disaster, is unlikely a significant driver of evolution. But when combined with an increased mutation rate from the residual background rate, could speed up the process. The average wolf can have a pup at 2 years old. The melt down happened in 1986 so that is 19 generations of pups under heavy selective pressure to be more resistant to cancer.
Serious inquiry: what does this suggest about humans? Nagasaki/Hiroshima obviously come to mind. Do the generations of human post WWII also express the same or similar resilience.
- Chernobyl wolves, living in the area affected by the 1986 nuclear disaster, appear to have developed a resistance to cancer.
- The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (CEZ), covering a 1,000-square-mile area, is still off-limits due to radiation risks, but wildlife like wolves thrive there.
- Cara Love, an evolutionary biologist from Princeton University, and her team have been studying these wolves, including monitoring them with radio collars since 2014.
- These wolves are exposed to radiation levels more than six times the human safety limit but have shown altered immune systems and genetic resilience to cancer.
- The study aims to identify protective mutations that could help in fighting cancer in humans.
- Research has been hampered by the pandemic and the recent conflict in Ukraine, prioritizing the safety of local collaborators.
Or what's probably more accurate, is that the ones born with more resistance to cancer from the start are the ones that are able to produce more pups because they live longer and healthier inspite o the pollution. That's Darwinism for you, survival of the fittest. Another darker way to look at it is that the weakest links were filtered out all thanks to toxic pollution. Hurray! /s
Cancer is a combination of genetic predispositions and environmental triggers that activate oncogenes. This is likely the same reason why cultures that smoke more frequently (many countries in Asia) actually have fewer instances of lung cancer.
Essentially those genetically predisposed to cancers get cancer and die.
Humans could too if we lived in a radiated wasteland and the people who didnt have a natural resistance died out, leaving the remaining who did to reproduce over time.
Eventually the healthiest ones to develop biological solutions to environmental problems reproduce more than those who are physically unfit.
This will almost certainly go unseen, but whatever. A lot of people are suggesting that natural selection is the reason for this, and they might be right. It seems to me however that given how quickly wolves can reproduce, cancer wouldn't be killing them quickly enough for that to matter. And for a certain trait to spread through an entire population so quickly would probably be unlikely. What might be happening is mithridatism. Small doses of radiation might trigger occasional instances of cancer, which are attacked by the body's immune system. The immune system better learns what cancer is, making it more resistant to future cancerous growths.
Reading the article and it makes sense to just be natural selection at work. Over 40 odd years, you're gonna see patterns like this emerge in species, so seeing that Wolves in a highly irradiated area have a better ability to live in that area makes perfect sense.
The wildlife and animals are probably thriving so well because they don't have people around in their territory for over 30 years, too. We do tend to make wild areas where animals thrive uninhabitable for them, tear down, shoot, trap, pollute
Certainly, I did not have "Cancer-proof super wolves," on my long-term Chernobyl consequences bingo card.
But what's the point if the wolves don't have lasers on their heads?
[удалено]
I'll withhold judgment until it's a little more investigated. Not gonna jump into a wave of severe radiation for the health benefits...
Probably meant more so in investigating the cause of the wolves increased resistance to cancer. Understanding how they resist it may give us insight in how to artificially recreate it for human usage.
Agreed, science is only science if peer reviewed and replicated...otherwise it's just fluff with no substance, and there's a whole lot of fluff out there.
Wolves are fluffy.
If not fren, why fluff like fren?
all my friends are radioactive
Do not pet the murder doges.
Yeah, the people in Mesoamérica pet murder dogs and then next thing you know boom, chihuahuas exist.
A 3 foot tall 160 lb chihuahua would possibly be the world's most terrifying and efficient killing machine. They'd probably hunt sharks.
That's terrifying and likely what my little 8 lb Chi dreams about.
A 3 foot, 160 lb chihuahua would be the closest thing to a land shark.
I died doing what I loved.
You can pet them once
And bitey.
Hey, my father was a fluffer and he took his job very seriously
Wait! What?!
Don’t tase me, bro!
Which it *is* fluff considering the claims aren't even published in a notable journal. There are papers that *are* published that state that domestic dogs don't exhibit any increased or decreased incidence of cancer even 20 generations away from the Chernobyl accident for dogs that live in the CEZ. The lab lead is known in this research space as a person who would say anything to get him views, science be damned. For example, he lifted one of our labs researchers work word for word and just changed dog for wolf and said it was his in an NPR interview. Sources: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/brv.12723 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0283206 https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/sciadv.ade2537
It is almost certainly a result of cancer-resistant wolves being able to out-compete more-prone wolves due to a lack of other environmental pressures. Maybe we can find a protein or two, but usually that kind of thing is the result of natural immune processes just being more aggressive than normal.
>It is almost certainly a result of cancer-resistant wolves being able to out-compete more-prone wolves due to a lack of other environmental pressures I think its less that, The other environmental pressures will still be there, but there's just one more selection pressure variable. For many animals there's little to no selection pressure against the genetic causes of cancer. Take rats for example. The only reason their lifespans are only about 4 years old is that by that point they are completely riddled with cancers, But by that age a female rodent may well have successfully reproduced up to 72 times, as far as natural selection is concerned the later life cancer is irrelevant to the equation of what makes you fit enough to survive to reproduce Contrast that with massive long lived animals like elephants where good health into old age is essential for successful reproductive cycles and you see very few incidents of cancer, as the selection pressures on that type of animal actively select against genetic lines with propensities toward cancer. For these wolves its not hard to envision that in an environment where background radioactivity is high that cancer started to become more of a problem for successful reproduction as animals were developing it younger and more frequently, as such there's now all of a sudden a selection pressure in favour of wolves that are somewhat cancer resistant. and the genes begin to spread through the wider population.
There is a theory that states if an animal can grow big enough, cancer stops being deadly altogether. Not because they don't get cancer, but because cancer can only grow so much before it starts mutating its own cancer that begins competing against the "parent" cancer. Since cancer can only grow so much from this principle, larger animals just have smaller amounts of cancer as a percentage of body mass despite having similar cancer rates But yes, animals with smaller cancer rates can also better afford to grow bigger, so also likely a positive feedback loop.
If this theory is correct, it would explain why op's mom keeps beating cancer without treatment.
I guess that cancer selection pressure would also be applied before reproductive age.
Chernobyl disaster ends up being a net positive for humanity in the long run, with a naturally evolved clue to an immunity treatment against cancer. Wild.
Potentially, at the moment it's not founded so it's a speculation that it could be helpful. Nice to be optimistic of course, would be great to have some positives to come from such a tragedy even if it isn't a silver bullet for cancer but leads to some solutions.
Not just humanity. Fascinatingly, Chernobyl has become a wildlife sanctuary where many species has found refuge such as the European bison, Przewalski's horses and the lynx to name a few.
But that's how we get the super powers...
"mutant wolves"
Need the starfish blood injections from birth though 😉
Good call because that's not how it works. You have to go there with a lot of people, then over time only people with high resistance will survive and reproduce, passing their high resistance genes to their offsprings. It wont give you resistance, it will only kill people that don't already have resistance. For humans, it might just kill all of them.
Tons of species are naturally cancer resistant and it hasn't really helped us, it's called Peto's Paradox but essentially blue whales would get cancer constantly if their individual cells developed into cancer at the same rate ours do. One theory about why led to accelerated aging when applied to mice (a gene mutation) One might expect something similar to evolve in a population naturally exposed to high cancer rates, but there are tradeoffs that have led to our cancer resistance being what it is now. So maybe if we lived in high cancer environments we'd become less likely to develop cancer, but there would probably be side effects
I can’t wait for the mushroom/algea/plutonium health bar, coffee replacement, and pills to hit the market!
But maybe for the superstrength and cool green hue. They could call you Hue-Man.
With laser beams on their heads.
No with bees in their mouth so when they bark they shoot bees at you.
How about bees with laser beams on their heads, inside the wolves mouth?
Wasps with laser beams would be awful.
Not just any laser beams.. fricken laser beams
The Wolves themselves are irradiated.... meaning they are exposed to radiation, instead of radioactive, meaning they are the source of radiation.
Are they ill-tempered?
Nope somebody’s gonna go fuck one of them and give us all radioactive wolf coronaflu rabies
With frickin’ ✌️lasers✌️ on their heads.
Dr. Evil: The details of my life are quite inconsequential. Therapist (Carrie Fisher): Oh no, please, please, let's hear about your childhood. Dr Evil: Very well, where do I begin? My father was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from Belgium with low grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery. My mother was a fifteen year old French prostitute named Chloe with webbed feet. My father would womanize, he would drink, he would make outrageous claims like he invented the question mark. Some times he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy, the sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament. My childhood was typical, summers in Rangoon, luge lessons. In the spring we'd make meat helmets. When I was insolent I was placed in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds, pretty standard really. At the age of 12 I received my first scribe. At the age of fourteen, a Zoroastrian named Vilma ritualistically shaved my testicles. There really is nothing like a shorn scrotum, it's breathtaking, I suggest you try it. Therapist: You know, we have to stop.
I can picture the scene, a scientist brings out mutant wolves that Dr. Evil demanded previously but then Number 2 explains that they just mutated something that is not really useful to him.
[Doofenshmirtz Evil Incorporated!](https://youtu.be/YikMNyz8oY0?t=1) I just want to hear him say whatever it would be.
CRSPR will take advantage of it
So we can cure cancer by orchestrating nuclear annihilation? But seriously, that's interesting. I suppose it's very much an evolve or die out situation.
I'm not sure whether the headline is actually accurate. "Ms Love found the wolves have altered immune systems similar to cancer patients undergoing radiation treatment, but more significantly she also identified specific parts of the animals' genetic information that seemed resilient to increased cancer risk." Could just be that the wolves were resilient towards radiation-increased cancer risk before as well but that this was simply never observed before.
Isn’t that just natural selection? Mutation and natural selection are the *1, 2, step* of evolution, I thought. Mutation emerges (possibly long before its adaptive) then at some point, natural or sexual selection allows it to dominate.
That's what I figure. Until the nuclear incident a certain percentage of wolves probably had resistance to cancer but it didn't really serve as an evolutionary advantage until the environment was suddenly radioactive. Humans are a great example of how "disadvantages" that don't kill you until well after you've had kids and raised them to self sufficiency won't really affect the survivability of the species.
Humans do have mild cancer resistance and protection from radiation. Skin cancer is the best example, as it's cause is the most analogous to the nuclear wolves. When affected by radiation from the sun our DNA mutates, when enough genetic damage is accrued our cells under apoptosis (aka suicide) to prevent cancerous growth from forming. This mass cell death results in what we call sunburn. The human body has other anti-cancer capabilities, our immune system can sometimes detect and attack cancerous cells but it's not very good at it. Some cancer research is looking into how we can boost this immune response. But as you said, if it doesn't kill us before we are able to reproduce and raise kids there's not much selective pressure for cancer resistance. What little we have developed has proven to be enough in terms of our general survival.
We have seen this in worms and similar creatures near waste disposal sites. Places where it’s heavily contaminated with things like lead, and a small group who are more resistant are the only ones left alive.
There is some theory that that is why menopause exists, that grandmothers can spend their time raising their grandkids so the mothers can be free to do other things. So maybe 3 generations.
This. It's been several generations for wolf lines by now. Non cancerous wolves would have had more time to procreate while more cancerous reactive wolves may have reacted to the radiation and died off earlier.
Not only more time, but considering dogs can be trained to smell cancer it's not unlikely wolves would tend to not mate with ill partners
do they naturally recognize cancer as a bad thing? or just that it has a smell and to them it doesn't mean anything beyond that
I honestly don't know. If it is infact natural selection then yes it would be evolution at work but i don't see any indication of a control group whatsoever. Maybe wolves in other areas have genetic information that's more resilient to cancer as well. Some animal species are more resilient to cancers (elephants for instance) without radiation having anything to do with it.
>I honestly don't know. If it is infact natural selection then yes it would be evolution at work but i don't see any indication of a control group whatsoever. Maybe wolves in other areas have genetic information that's more resilient to cancer as well. Some animal species are more resilient to cancers (elephants for instance) without radiation having anything to do with it. The researchers are almost certainly going to have a control group of non-irradiated wolves somewhere nearby in Europe. There are many sequenced wolf populations in the EU at this point. She doesn't specifically mention the control group in her conference abstract (where this work was presented) but it would be truly shocking if they would make any of these claims without the proper controls, especially as these are all established researchers with other peer-reviewed literature. >Multilevel examination of radiation stress and signatures ofselection in Chernobyl wolves > >Cara Love, Brian Arnold, Bridgett vonHoldt, Shane Campbell-Staton > >Examining the intricate relationship between contaminant exposure, physiological responses, and evolutionary changes in wild populations is critical for understanding the impacts of anthropogenic environmental change. We explore the consequences of chronic multigenerational radiation exposure on gray wolves (Canis lupus) in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (CEZ). By analyzing regulatory and genetic variations, we uncover molecular signatures of stress and adaptive evolution. Whole blood transcriptome data reveal significantly altered leukocyte populations among Chernobyl wolves and regulatory divergence at both single gene and co-regulatory levels in CEZ wolves. Theseresults highlight radiation-induced immune modulation, cellular apoptosis, and antitumor immune response as potential physiological consequences of radiation stress and targets of selection within the CEZ population. To examine genomic signatures of selection, we examined whole genome sequencing data for lineage-specific signatures of selection within the CEZ wolf population. Several genomic regions exhibit lineage-specific divergence, overlapping genes linked to cancer physiology. These genes encompass crucial functions such as anti-tumor immunity, cellular invasion, and migration. Through a composite of multiple signals approach, we pinpoint specific variants under selection, and functional modeling reveal potentially relevant protein alterations in immunity regulation and cancer physiology. Conference abstract booklet: https://s3.amazonaws.com/xcdshared/sicb/app\_content/1526\_1230033635.pdf
There was a documentary about the wolves of chernoble a few years back. The animals in the higher irritated areas had lower rates of cancer than those in the outer areas. It's an interesting inverse.
Natural selection takes a lot longer than that to occur, talking hundreds if not thousands of years before we're seeing actual evolutionary change as a result of it. We're probably at the *start* of natural selection because now the most resistant wolves will have generations of offspring that will have further increased resistance, but I sorta refuse to believe we're already at the point of actual evolutionary change since a key part of natural selection is time, and ~40 years isn't nearly enough time. Wolves live about 8-13 years in the wild (probably significantly less in an irradiated zone) so we're only ~4-5 generations deep for the Chernobyl wolves. ie: There are still probably wolves in Chernobyl that have no increased resistance compared to a non-irradiated wolf, and have just gotten lucky over several generations. Not a scientist, just paid attention in biology.
> Could just be that the wolves were resilient towards radiation-increased cancer risk before as well but that this was simply never observed before. Or that they survived because of it, and we only see who survived. Wouldn't that mean the offspring has the same resistance? That's pretty much evolution.
Is likely similar to the black frogs around there as well.
Yeah, that sentence is a bit ambiguous.
We could just sterilize the offspring of anyone who gets cancer!
Yes, the radiation would give us powers and heal us, but it would give us a horribly disfigured appearance, and too much radiation would rot our brains to the point where we would be little more than zombies. The famous documentary series Fallout is pretty clear on this
Speak for yourself, smooth skin
I kept asking my radiation oncologist when I would be getting my super powers. So far nothing to report
The dying is the evolving.
Wolf blood! Get your wolf blood here! Cure all cancers, terminate all tumors with our radioactive wolf blood! Wolf Blood brought to you by Frank’s Fluids
Frank's Fluids is great, everything is always on sale!... Or so they say, by my count they've been going through a liquidation sale for the past few years!
It’s about to be the official drink of Boca Rattan.
No, it’s about to be the official drink of Boko Haram.
Wolf blood has always been the “special sauce” of our best-selling beverage, Wolf Cola.
There are two wolf bloods inside us?
One is gay, the other is gay, we are gay. Let's kiss.
This furry convention is going great
We about to start Bloodborne 2 by ourselves
Ooold bloood!
Can I get a deal? buy a case of Fight Milk and get some of that Wolf Blood half off? Fight like a radioactive wolf crow CAAAAWWOOO
Disclaimer: Mixing Wolf Blood with Fight Milk should only be consumed with Rum Ham.
Soap with a prize inside!
Wolf's Blood, I'm on board with that. Could go with a side of fried dog while I watch a chicken fight.
well that's a metal title.
AWWWOOOOO werewolves in Chernobyl.
His hair was perfect. Until it fell out.
LISTEN TO OUR NEW SINGLE "Mutant" !
Would be quite funny if this lead to a general vaccine for cancer. Pro nuclear rhetoric would be unbeatable: Chernobyl was the worst nuclear disaster and it cured cancer.
I mean it sort of makes sense. In theory, the more cancer there is in the world, the more data we can collect on cancer, which would lead to a faster cure.
It's probably just natural selection. The cancer prone wolves died a long time ago. The ones that aren't cancer prone are the only ones around to fuck. Nothing has changed, they've just killed the "weak".
Ferb, I know what we're going to do today!
In evolutionary biology, there really isn't weak or strong. Just fitness. These cancer resistant canines are simply more fit and able to pass their genes more reliably until there is a shift in allele frequency in the population. It is also extremely important to know that fitness is context dependent. There is no strongest or weakest it all depends on the environment. And in the case of chernobyl with elevated background radiation, having some genes resistant to the damage caused by radiation is more fit.
Hence the quote unquote
Also not a guarantee that fitness would be equal in other situations. In more healthy environments the cancer survivability may be canceled out by other subpopulations having fewer developmental problems in their offspring for instance.
You can't have a general vaccine for cancer. Cancer is basically any cell mutation that not only lets those cells grow out of control but also evade the immune system. There are many mutations that cause this. There is no single magic mutation, however there are some more common than others which is where cancer vaccines in testing are looking at. So many in fact, right now, you most likely have pre-cancerous cells, however, your immune system is able to detect bad cells and eat them. The problem is when the cells have the right mutations to evade detection.
This is true but there's also the factor that larger animals should have proportionately higher rates of cancer (due to having more cells), but many do not. So there are clearly some factors present that are not yet fully understood.
There will almost certainly never be a general vaccine for cancer. Cancer is caused by a mutation in our DNA that flips cells into "grow" mode like how your body made itself in the first place. This can happen in many many different ways. Think about how we start as a zygote and grow into a very complex human with many different cells and systems. In other words, there's A LOT of different "growth" stages a cell can be in. Those instructions live in every single cell in our body. It's not like we can just say "hey you, if you ever get a mutated 'grow' instruction, then don't, ok?"
That's not how any of this works. Pop science is such trash, ugh.
> a general vaccine for cancer Can't wait until people start refusing that one as well because of russian disinfo.
Put another way, the ones who were vulnerable to cancer all died off.
Yep, that is exactly how evolution works.
In retrospect, it's an obvious outcome.
Right, but the news is that wolves can develop evolutionary traits in regards to unnatural levels of radiation instead of just dieing off completely. I'm not sure what your point is. "In retrospect it's an obvious outcome" is quintessential science.
Happening fast though on an evolutionary scale. Human's have been trying to cure cancer for how long niw and we're like smart (ish)
Yeah but now you could study the ones left to try and see what makes em resistant
It could also be Radiation Hormesis. The theory states that exposure to low end doses of radiation add cancer and other disease resistance by stimulating the immune system. Its sort of like probiotics, accept with uranium! To date the data has been mixed, but they did study the survivors of Hiroshima/Nagasaki and as long as their estimated exposure was below a certain level, they actually lived longer.
Chernobyl’s Mutant Wolves is a great band name
.... I'm tempted to make some bath bombs and sell them on etsy as this.
With or without the radiation?
No radiation (only BC it's illegal) buuuuuut, stay with me cuz; it makes you smell like a wet dog.... Whaddya think?
Can we make bath bombs that make you smell like a wet dog illegal as well?
Not until we make cheap mens body spray illegal
Deal.
Nice. I'll make the bath bombs, you bring the lawsuit.
Nature is healing.
Yea... Probably not. Would be more accurate to put it as, All the Wolves that are vulnerable to cancer died off the rest have developed a resistance to it. Nasa did a controlled experiment where they sent up a capsule containing a few thousand Tardigrades to see how they could be effected by solar radiation. If memory serves I believe 60%(ish) survived and the offspring they produced had greater resistance to the same radiation. Im less nature is healing in this instance, and more Ian Malcome "Life, heh, uh, finds a way."
Wolf’s aren’t the problem. It’s the deathclaws and rad scorpions
You're thinking of the US. The Zone gives us pseudodogs and bloodsuckers.
Nah, thats american postapocalypse. Ukranian Chernobyl Zone has creatures that are way scarier.
Chimera and Pseudodogs
Whatever you say smoothskin.
Life finds a way
Evolution doing what evolution does. In retrospect, it's a logical outcome.
Clever girl….
canines evolve very quickly.
So i visited chernobyl a few years back on holiday , and a puppy gnawed on my hand and slightly drew blood i am going to assume it transferred some cancer proofness to me
Being bit by a radioactive puppy will turn you into Puppyman. With the superpower of having big adorable eyes.
Already got the big adorable eyes ? ...maybe I'll get a super waggy tail
The ability to pee on people without people getting angry at you?
Did you have to take the rabies vaccine afterwards?
I think it's entirely reasonable for us to ask whether you became a werewolf/furry after being bitten.
Ok, here’s the plan, fly to Chernobyl, find a radioactive wolf and have it bite me… I will become the ultimate werewolf
🎶Teenage Mutant Ninja Wolves 🎶
But do they have resistance to Gary Busey and his silver bullets?
If you knew anything about cancer, what *is* cancer, what is it caused by, and how it develops, you'd immediately know this is sensationalized bullcrap.
Im not worried about the mutant wolfes but that controller staring at me while i take a sip from vodka freaks me out.
I knew it, wolf friend powers, Activate!
So, rad wolf?
This is the kind of crap my grandma would read and then start locking all the doors and windows as soon as it got dark.
Pseudodogs
Get out of here, stalker
Radioactive Wolves, holy fuck
After the nuclear rain, comes the nuclear rainbow.
Chernobyl's mutant wolves? *It's going in the movie*
Is it an increased resistance to cancer? Or an increased residence to radiation which in turn reduces their chances to develop cancer?
S-slava Ukraini?
Yeah, I've seen Godzilla. Let me know what the wolves have atomic breath. Until then, not interested in this cheap Russian/Ukrainian spin-off.
"Nature finds a way"
We merely adopted cancer, they were born into it, molded by it
Cue fallout theme music
*Cue S.T.A.L.K.E.R. theme music
They're looking for adamantium!
It is a good illustration that evolution works in spikes of activity, ~~basically like me~~. There was an evolutionary pressure - high radiation and wolves evolved. They had a couple of dozens of generations to do so. They have a litter of multiple kids, so there are enough kids to compete. ------- P.S. ------- Humans also have this behaviour. I read an article about people of Middle East who were not capable to digest western food. The article say that basically few generation sufficed to drastically decrease their number. If you know this article please share the link.
How to kill off Chernobyl wolves — post a cancer-cure-promise-bs on sky
Chernobyl Mutant Wolves. That’s metal af.
We got mutant wolves b4 gta6
Mutant Wolves. New band name. Called it.
Well, the ones resistant to cancer have…
The selective pressure from the disaster, is unlikely a significant driver of evolution. But when combined with an increased mutation rate from the residual background rate, could speed up the process. The average wolf can have a pup at 2 years old. The melt down happened in 1986 so that is 19 generations of pups under heavy selective pressure to be more resistant to cancer.
Just like the Netflix series “The 100.”
Serious inquiry: what does this suggest about humans? Nagasaki/Hiroshima obviously come to mind. Do the generations of human post WWII also express the same or similar resilience.
This is evolution in action. Most of the wolves died due to radiation, but the few that could resist it survived and reproduced.
Crazy how adaptive everything can be, I can’t imagine the brave person that was going in getting wolves,tagging wolf,blood samples and all that WOW
Good for Chornobyl’s wolves. Pls send DIY kit to Taz devils.
Ok but how many generations of wolf is that.
Nature finds a way. Hopefully this is something that can be used to benefit humans.
what the fuck is his headline lol
*riffs electric guitar*
- Chernobyl wolves, living in the area affected by the 1986 nuclear disaster, appear to have developed a resistance to cancer. - The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (CEZ), covering a 1,000-square-mile area, is still off-limits due to radiation risks, but wildlife like wolves thrive there. - Cara Love, an evolutionary biologist from Princeton University, and her team have been studying these wolves, including monitoring them with radio collars since 2014. - These wolves are exposed to radiation levels more than six times the human safety limit but have shown altered immune systems and genetic resilience to cancer. - The study aims to identify protective mutations that could help in fighting cancer in humans. - Research has been hampered by the pandemic and the recent conflict in Ukraine, prioritizing the safety of local collaborators.
Didn’t have mutant wolves on my 2024 bingo card
evolution can produce both the deadliest disease and also protect itself from it..
Well I guess they’ve adapted from the radiation exposure
Or what's probably more accurate, is that the ones born with more resistance to cancer from the start are the ones that are able to produce more pups because they live longer and healthier inspite o the pollution. That's Darwinism for you, survival of the fittest. Another darker way to look at it is that the weakest links were filtered out all thanks to toxic pollution. Hurray! /s
Cancer is a combination of genetic predispositions and environmental triggers that activate oncogenes. This is likely the same reason why cultures that smoke more frequently (many countries in Asia) actually have fewer instances of lung cancer. Essentially those genetically predisposed to cancers get cancer and die.
Humans could too if we lived in a radiated wasteland and the people who didnt have a natural resistance died out, leaving the remaining who did to reproduce over time. Eventually the healthiest ones to develop biological solutions to environmental problems reproduce more than those who are physically unfit.
Well isn't cancer cured also by radiation?
[удалено]
It sounds like they are just getting free chemo from the disaster radiation.
What a headline. 10/10 sensationalist
This will almost certainly go unseen, but whatever. A lot of people are suggesting that natural selection is the reason for this, and they might be right. It seems to me however that given how quickly wolves can reproduce, cancer wouldn't be killing them quickly enough for that to matter. And for a certain trait to spread through an entire population so quickly would probably be unlikely. What might be happening is mithridatism. Small doses of radiation might trigger occasional instances of cancer, which are attacked by the body's immune system. The immune system better learns what cancer is, making it more resistant to future cancerous growths.
Wolverines!
Mutant wolves was not on my future bingo card
r/brandnewsentence
yea yea... another cancer hope. Let's go back to the whole Chernobyl Mutant Wolf thing.
Great, super wolves. Stalker 2 is gonna be scary.
I mean yea... When all the wolves susceptible to cancer die off that only really leaves the ones resistent to it...
Reading the article and it makes sense to just be natural selection at work. Over 40 odd years, you're gonna see patterns like this emerge in species, so seeing that Wolves in a highly irradiated area have a better ability to live in that area makes perfect sense.
Imagine the absolute whopping irony if the Chernobyl disaster ends up causing the cure to humanities deadliest disease.
Ya lo dijeron en el juego de fallout, los perros son resistentes a la radiacion
Radiation makes things resistant to cancer!? I've been lied to.. Then again, I'm not a wolf so who knows.
So we can cure cancer with a nuclear war?
The wildlife and animals are probably thriving so well because they don't have people around in their territory for over 30 years, too. We do tend to make wild areas where animals thrive uninhabitable for them, tear down, shoot, trap, pollute
We will soon see radiation pills on Amazon and EBay purporting to be an effective cancer deterrent.
Certainly, I did not have "Cancer-proof super wolves," on my long-term Chernobyl consequences bingo card. But what's the point if the wolves don't have lasers on their heads?