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Mutant wolves that roam the human-free Chernobyl Exclusion Zone have developed cancer-resilient genomes that could be key to helping humans fight the deadly disease, according to a study.
The wild animals have managed to adapt and survive the high levels of radiation that have plagued the area after a nuclear reactor at the Chernobyl power plant exploded in 1986, becoming the world’s worst nuclear accident.
Humans abandoned the area after the explosion leaked cancer-causing radiation into the environment, and a 1,000-square-mile zone was roped off to prevent further human exposure.
But in the nearly 38 years since the nuclear disaster, wildlife has reclaimed the area — including packs of wolves that seem to be unaffected by the chronic exposure to the radiation.
Cara Love, an evolutionary biologist and ecotoxicologist in Shane Campbell-Staton’s lab at Princeton University, has been studying how the mutant wolves have evolved to survive their radioactive environment and presented her findings at the Annual Meeting of the Society of Integrative and Comparative Biology in Seattle, Washington, last month.
In 2014, Love and her colleagues went inside the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone and put GPS collars equipped with radiation dosimeters on the wild wolves.
They also took blood from the animals to understand their responses to the cancer-causing radiation, according to a release published by the Society of Integrative and Comparative Biology.
With the specialized collars, the researchers can get real-time measurements of where the wolves are and how much radiation they are exposed to, Love said. --->READ MORE HERE
After nearly 40 years, mutated wolves roaming the deserted streets of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (CEZ) appear to have developed cancer resistance, according to Princeton evolutionary biologist and ecotoxologist, Cara Love – who has been studying how the Chernobyl wolves have survived for generations while facing exposure to radioactive particles.
Roughly 100,000 people were evacuated from the 1,000 square-mile CEZ in 1986, and it has remained abandoned ever since, as radiation still poses a risk.
And with no humans around, wildlife such as wolves and horses has flourished.
In 2014, Love and a team of researchers visited the CEZ, and attached radio collars to the wolves in order to track them. She said they were able to obtain “real-time measurements of where [the wolves] are and how much [radiation] they are exposed to.”
What’s more, after taking blood samples, the team discovered that the wolves were exposed to upwards of 11.28 millirem of radiation daily for their entire lives – more than 6x the legal safety limit for a human. Love found that the wolves’ immune systems displayed similar properties to cancer patients undergoing radiation treatment – including specific parts of the animals’ genetic information that appears resilient to increased cancer risk. --->READ MORE HEREFollow link below to a relevant story:
+++++Inside the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone where mutant wolves have developed cancer-resilient genomes: photos+++++
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