{"id":68517,"date":"2025-10-13T15:16:58","date_gmt":"2025-10-13T09:46:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=68517"},"modified":"2025-10-13T15:16:58","modified_gmt":"2025-10-13T09:46:58","slug":"naked-mole-rat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/naked-mole-rat\/","title":{"rendered":"Naked Mole Rat"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><b>Naked Mole Rat Latest News<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A new study of the naked mole rat shows that these animals have evolved a DNA repair mechanism that could explain their longevity.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>About Naked Mole Rat<\/b><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It is a small, hairless <\/span><b>burrowing rodent<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> native to parts of East Africa.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Distribution:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> They are predominantly found in <\/span><b>southern Ethiopia<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, <\/span><b>Kenya, Somalia, and Djibouti.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Habitat:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> They <\/span><b>inhabit drier parts<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> of the tropical <\/span><b>grasslands and savanna.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Food:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> They are <\/span><b>herbivores<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and feed primarily on very large tubers.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Social Structure:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> It is <\/span><b>eusocial,<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> meaning they live in large colonies in which <\/span><b>only one female breeds <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">and the majority of workers (both males and females) spend their entire lives working for the colony.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Conservation Status:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> IUCN: <\/span><b>Least Concern<\/b><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2><b>Characteristics of Naked Mole Rat<\/b><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It is famous for <\/span><b>living an astonishingly long time,<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> up to around 37 years, nearly 10x longer than mammals of similar size.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It <\/span><b>lacks<\/b> <b>pain sensitivity in its skin<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and has <\/span><b>very low metabolic and respiratory rates<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It is also remarkable for its longevity and its resistance to cancer and <\/span><b>oxygen deprivation.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Their lifestyle is more akin to that of bees and wasps and <\/span><b>other eusocial insects.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">They live in underground burrows that may stretch to 5 km, in colonies of around 70 animals.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It is <\/span><b>cold-blooded,<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> unable to control their body temperature and dependent on the prevailing outside temperature.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3><b>Key Findings of Researchers<\/b><\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The <\/span><b>cyclic GMP-AMP synthase (cGAS) functions<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> differently in naked mole rats compared to humans and mice. (GMP \u2013AMP synthesis which modulates various cellular processes)<\/span><\/li>\n<li><b>Key differences in cGAS function<\/b>\n<ul>\n<li><b>Humans and Mice:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> cGAS <\/span><b>interferes with DNA repair,<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> increasing the risk of aging and cancer<\/span><\/li>\n<li><b>Naked Mole Rats:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> cGAS <\/span><b>enhances DNA repair<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, promoting genome stability and potentially contributing to their longevity.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This is due to <\/span><b>four amino acid substitutions<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in the cGAS structure that allow it to bind to DNA longer and facilitate repair by bringing together <\/span><b>repair proteins FANCI and RAD50.<\/b><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Source: <\/b><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thehindu.com\/sci-tech\/science\/just-four-mutations-help-naked-mole-rats-fix-dna-and-live-long\/article70154527.ece\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">TH<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Naked mole rat is a small, hairless burrowing rodent native to parts of East Africa. Read more about Naked Mole Rat, Distribution, Characteristics, Latest News.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":68555,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3229],"class_list":{"0":"post-68517","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","8":"tag-naked-mole-rat","9":"no-featured-image-padding"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68517\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}