Vita gazette – It was also discovered that mole cells, known to live in an oxygen-free environment and not get cancer, reproduce until they die.

Scientists have discovered that in addition to treating cancer, mole cells can also help increase human reproduction. However, naked mole rats, native to East Africa, continue to surprise science. These mass-dwelling rodents can live up to 37 years, cope with low oxygen conditions, and do not develop l, which are being studied to develop new drugs and therapies.

Now a new feature has been discovered. Most mammals, including humans, have an ever-decreasing egg supply that becomes human reproduction. However, naked mole rats can reproduce their lives, and researchers may have uncovered a fascinating reason.

In addition to having a vast reserve of healthy egg cells in their ovaries, naked mole rats create new eggs after birth, according to a new study published in Nature Communications. On the other hand, humans are probably born with all the eggs we will ever have.

An astonishing number of eggs

Most research shows that women’s egg cells start to deteriorate around 40, and having a baby at this age can increase the risk of chromosomal abnormalities and other disorders. Then, around age 50, during menopause, a woman’s ovaries stop releasing eggs altogether.

But female naked mole rats can breed for their entire lives with no notable decline in the quality of their eggs. Brieño-Enríquez and colleagues removed the ovaries from six naked mole rats from their research colony at the University of Pittsburgh to test this. Then, under a microscope, they analysed these ovaries at different periods of development—from one to 90 days—and compared them with the ovaries of lab mice, an animal commonly used as a model for human reproduction.

The team used various staining techniques and immunofluorescence “luminous markers that can track cells as they divide” to count the number of germ cells in each animal that eventually become mature egg cells known as oocytes. On day five, they discovered an astonishing number of germ cells in the naked mole rats, vastly outnumbering those in the mice.

Study leader Miguel Brieño-Enríquez, a reproductive researcher at the University of Pittsburgh, says now the secrets behind naked mole rats’ lifetime reproductive abilities may offer clues to help prolong human fertility. “It was fascinating, but part of it was also intimidating,” says Ned Place, senior studythor and reproductive biologist at the Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine. “I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, somebody ‘that means me and my lab’ is going to have to count all these cells.”

Then, things got even weirder: When the scientists looked again three days later, they discovered that the naked mole rats’ ovaries had even more germ cells than when they last checked, meaning the rodents were creating new cells to add to their ovarian reserve. At eight days old, the naked mole rat females had, on average, 1.5 million eggs, roughly 95 times more than mice of the same age.

The researchers also found precursor egg cells in 10-year-old naked mole rats, suggesting that the creation of new eggs could continue well into their 20s and 30s.

Like bees, naked mole rats live in colonies, sometimes of hundreds of individuals, with just one breeding queen.

This dominant female suppresses the ability of other females to reproduce until her reign comes to an end. If a queen dies or is killed, the other females will fight for the throne, and the winner will become the new breeding female of the colony.

To test how this process affects fertility, the researchers created their queens by removing several three-year-old, non-breeding females from their colony into a new area to activate their reproductive systems.

They found that these females already had primordial germ cells in their ovaries, but the cells only started dividing into eggs when they transitioned to a queen.

That means this previously untapped reserve of cells could become viable eggs even after years of dormancy, a discovery that may offer clues to prevent declining fertility in women.

Immunity to cancer discovered in 2020

In 2020, a team from the University of Cambridge discovered that moles are immune to cancer because they can stop cells from multiplying.

It was noted that studies are still ongoing to find out how this could be used for treatment in humans. “The results surprised us and completely changed our understanding of cancer resistance in naked mole rats. Suppose we can understand what’s special about these animals’ immune systems and how they protect them from cancer. In that case, we can develop interventions to prevent human disease,” said Dr Walid Khaled of the study.