While we do not know how to create the 38 additional copies of a gene in Elephants that codes for a tumor suppressor protein called p53, would we not be smart to do everything possible to perpetuate large populations of Elelphants as well as the rest of natures creation in it's wild state so that we keep the genetic code of the Earth optimum.........By doing this, we retain all the ingredients of life available to us so as to derive new foods, medicines and other life giving properties to optimize our existence as well as the existence of all that share the planet with us over the millenia ahead?,,,,....As our great mid 20th century naturalist Aldo Leopold stated in his classic Round River journal: "The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant, What good is it?".......... "If the land mechanism as a whole is good, then every part is good, whether we understand it or not"........... "If the biota, in the course of eons, has built something we like but do not understand, then who but a fool would discard seemingly useless parts?"............ "To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering"

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Jumbo shield against cancer

G.S. Mudur

PROTEIN-PROTECTED New Delhi, Oct. 8: An Indian cancer biologist in the US who  grew up in Chennai loving organic chemistry and mathematics has helped resolve a puzzle that had baffled  scientists for decades: the rarity of cancer in elephants. Srividya Bhaskara, a principal investigator at the  Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah,  is part of a research team that has found that elephants  have 38 additional copies of a gene that codes for a  tumour suppressor protein called p53. Humans, in contrast, have two copies of p53. The team's experiments suggest that the additional copies  of p53 give elephants a far more robust mechanism to  kill damaged cells that may turn cancerous than similar  cellular machinery available in humans. The rarity of cancer among elephants, despite their life  spans ranging between 50 and 70 years, has been a puzzle because their large body size and rapid growth  while they are young should increase the frequency of cancer as they grow and age. Some biologists compute that such a cancer risk should have caused elephants to go extinct."At the  rate of cell division we see, young elephants should be getting cancer and dying before they even get a  chance to reproduce," Joshua Schiffman, a paediatric  oncologist at the Huntsman Cancer Institute who led  the research, told The Telegraph over the phone. However, the researchers, who analysed a database  of over 600 elephants maintained by an elephant- keeper in Sweden, found that only about five per cent of the elephants had been documented as dying  from cancer compared with about 11 to 25 per cent of humans. The study's findings appeared today in the Journal  of the American Medical Association. The p53, discovered 35 years ago, has long been  known to suppress tumours by signalling cells that have acquired genetic damage to commit apoptosis, or cellular suicide. The p53 gene is mutated or inactivated in breast, liver, lung, ovarian and colon cancers, among others. Now, the Utah researchers have found that  elephant cells subjected to genetic damage are pushed towards apoptosis far more aggressively than human cells with similar  genetic damage. Bhaskara, independently involved in research  aimed at developing new drugs for chemotherapy,  helped design some of the experiments on elephant cells, sharing her expertise on biological repair mechanisms involving genetic material. The scientists found that elephant cells self- destructed at twice the rate of healthy human  cells and more than five times the rate of cells from people with a condition called Li-Fraumeni,  who have only one copy of p53 and thus are at high risk of developing cancer. "This is a discovery," Renu Wadhwa, head of the cell proliferation research group at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology in Japan, who was not associated  with the Utah research, said over the phone. "These findings suggest that elephants have very  strong tumour suppressor mechanisms. Through the extra copies of the gene, elephants are securing  this mechanism." But scientists have cautioned that more research  would be needed to fully understand the mechanisms in play in elephants. Earlier studies in mice had shown  that extra copies of p53 could accelerate ageing. "It is possible that elephants have some compensatory genetic mechanisms that prevent the premature ageing observed in mice with extra p53," said Sanjeev Das, a senior scientist at the National Institute of Immunology,  New Delhi, who has been independently studying p53 mechanisms in cancer. Bhaskara, who completed school and university in  Chennai before moving to the US for research, recalls  wanting to study organic chemistry and mathematics  while in high school but later switching to biochemistry  in university. "Mathematics is theoretical," she said in a phone interview. "But biochemistry is lab work -- and I'm doing just that." The Utah scientists are hoping to use their findings  to test large numbers of natural or synthetic  compounds on cancer cells. "We want to determine if any compound can mimic,  in cells exposed to genetic damage, the effect of the  extra p53 we see in elephant cells," Schiffman said.  "The long-term goal is to apply such knowledge on  patients."