Who's heard of the Naked Mole Rat?

Ugly duckling mole rats might hold key to longevity

Who would have thought that the secrets to long life might exist in the naked, wrinkled body of one of the world's ugliest animals? Probably not many, but current research may be leading seekers of the Fountain of Youth to a strange little beast — the naked mole rat.

The naked mole rat is certainly not one of nature's cuddliest species. These small rodents are hairless, wrinkled, blind and buck-toothed. Stan Braude, Ph.D., lecturer in biology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, however, is attracted to these animals and has been studying them for over 25 years, with about 20 of those years being in the field in Kenya.

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Some of the "hottest" research on naked mole rats today concerns senescence, or aging. Naked mole rats in the lab have reached up to 28 years of age. And it's not just the controlled environments of their captivity that are doing this. Braude has observed mole rats in the wild that are 17 years and older. But these are the breeders. Lab researchers didn't realize that in the wild workers only live two or three years.

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Naked mole rat



Naked mole rats have a complex social structure in which only one female (the queen) and one to three males reproduce, while the rest of the members of the colony function as workers. As in certain bee species, the workers are divided along a continuum of different worker-caste behaviors instead of discrete groups[1]. Some function primarily as tunnelers, expanding the large network of tunnels within the burrow system, and some primarily as soldiers, designed to protect the group from outside predators.

Evolution has benefited naked mole-rats by ridding them of a body chemical called Substance P, a neurotransmitter released by pain fibers that send signals to the central nervous system in mammals after making contact with things that cause long-lasting, achy pain.

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Naked mole-rats, native to east-central Africa, developed a protective reaction to acids through evolution. Living in tight underground quarters, the mole-rats exhale high levels of carbon dioxide, which becomes acid when it touches skin and mucous tissue in the nose, eyes and mouth. But the mole-rats have evolved to become desensitized to the stinging pain of acid.