Blame Our Evolutionary Risk Of Cancer On Body Mass

A key enzyme that cuts short our cellular lifespan in an effort to thwart cancer has now been linked to body mass. Until now, scientists believed that our relatively long lifespans controlled the expression of telomerase--an enzyme that can lengthen the lives of cells, but can also increase the rate of cancer. "Mice express telomerase in all their cells, which helps them heal dramatically fast. Skin lesions heal much faster in mice, and after surgery a mouse's recovery time is far shorter than a human's. It would be nice to have that healing power, but the flip side of it is runaway cell reproduction--cancer."