Ace researchers have found that sea sponges are incredibly resistant to radiation, and though some species can live for hundreds of years or longer, the their study didn’t find any evidence of tumors in the animals. In fact, one species studied could withstand 100 times the dose of radiation lethal to humans! At least part of the sponges’ resistance comes from the over-expression of genes involved in DNA repair. As the ACE team writes in their paper published in the February ’25 edition of the journal Biology about the sponge’s radiation resistance: “This may make them an excellent model system for studying cancer resistance and developing new approaches for cancer prevention and treatment.”
Read the ASU News story about the article here.
