Parallel evolution of reduced cancer risk and tumor suppressor duplications in Xenarthra
- University of California, Berkeley, United States
- United States Department of Health and Human Services, United States
- University at Buffalo, State University of New York, United States
Abstract
The risk of developing cancer is correlated with body size and lifespan within species, but there is no correlation between cancer and either body size or lifespan between species indicating that large, long-lived species have evolved enhanced cancer protection mechanisms. Previously we showed that several large bodied Afrotherian lineages evolved reduced intrinsic cancer risk, particularly elephants and their extinct relatives (Proboscideans), coincident with pervasive duplication of tumor suppressor genes (Vazquez and Lynch 2021). Unexpectedly, we also found that Xenarthrans (sloths, armadillos, and anteaters) evolved very low intrinsic cancer risk. Here, we show that: 1) several Xenarthran lineages independently evolved large bodies, long lifespans, and reduced intrinsic cancer risk; 2) the reduced cancer risk in the stem lineages of Xenarthra and Pilosa coincided with bursts of tumor suppressor gene duplications; 3) cells from sloths proliferate extremely slowly while Xenarthran cells induce apoptosis at very low doses of DNA damaging agents; and 4) the prevalence of cancer is extremely low Xenarthrans, and cancer is nearly absent from armadillos. These data implicate the duplication of tumor suppressor genes in the evolution of remarkably large body sizes and decreased cancer risk in Xenarthrans and suggest they are a remarkably cancer resistant group of mammals.
Data availability
All data generated or analysed during this study are included in the manuscript, supporting files, and data.
Article and author information
Author details
Juan Manuel Vazquez
Funding
Division of Intramural Research, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (AAI15006)
- Maria T Pena
- Linda B Adams
National Institutes of Health (R56AG071860)
- Vincent J Lynch
National Science Foundation (2028459)
- Vincent J Lynch
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Copyright
This is an open-access article, free of all copyright, and may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose. The work is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication.
Metrics
-
- 1,659
- views
-
- 183
- downloads
-
- 11
- citations
Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.
Citations by DOI
-
- 11
- citations for umbrella DOI https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.82558
Download links
A two-part list of links to download the article, or parts of the article, in various formats.
Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)
Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)
Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)
Parallel evolution of reduced cancer risk and tumor suppressor duplications in Xenarthra
eLife 11:e82558.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.82558
