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.
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Article URL : https://news.yahoo.com/mutant-wolves-roaming-chernobyl-exclusion-032300787.html?.tsrc=daily_mail&uh_test=0_00