As you read this story, you will learn the following:
-
The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (CEZ) has quickly become a 1,000-square-mile scientific testing ground as experts use the high-radiation zone as an opportunity to learn about animal biology under extreme conditions.
-
Princeton University biologists have studied wolves in the CEZ for a decade and found that their populations are more prosperous than neighboring wolf populations, possibly due to reduced human contact and genetic mutations that prevent cancer.
-
Biologists are working with other cancer experts to see if these specific mutations have therapeutic uses in humans.
Disaster struck the Ukrainian-Belarusian border town of Chernobyl (then part of the Soviet Union) on April 26, 1986, when a series of steam explosions caused a nuclear meltdown. This apocalyptic event affected hundreds of thousands of people and greatly affected the surrounding environment.
But 40 years later, something strange happened. The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (CEZ), an area of ​​approximately 1,000 square miles surrounding the nuclear power plant, is slowly becoming one of the world’s largest scientific experiments exploring the long-term effects of ionizing radiation. While humans may have abandoned the area, other animals have remained nearby.
2016, A study found Eastern tree frog (Oriental Tree Frog) exhibit different characteristics from their neighboring cousins ​​in the CEZ, and in 2023, another study Clear genetic differences discovered Between dogs from Chernobyl and dogs living in the city of Chernobyl 10 miles away. Now, Princeton University biologists Cara Love and Shane Campbell-Stanton are exploring another strange mammalian feature of the CEZ—one that unexpectedly Xi Wolves. Results of the decade-long study were presented at the 2024 annual meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology.
Analyzing wolves in the CEZ is particularly interesting because they are apex predators, the top of the food chain. This is usually a privileged position in an ecosystem, but when that ecosystem is flooded with radiation, these animals are forced to eat irradiated prey, which in turn eat irradiated plants growing from irradiated soil. Basically, the radiation goes all the way down.
This would seem to indicate that wolves are disproportionately affected in the CEZ, but Love said that’s not happening. In fact, she told NPR, the CEZ’s wolves are actually seven times denser There are more wildlife reserves than neighboring Belarus.
“Gray wolves provide a very interesting opportunity to understand the effects of long-term, low-dose, multi-generational exposure to ionizing radiation,” Campbell-Stanton told NPR. “As an evolutionary biologist, the first question that comes to my mind is whether this radiation is sufficient to be a stressor and, in fact, a selective pressure.”
In 2014, a Princeton University research team collared these CEZ wolves, along with GPS and radiation dosimeters, to understand how the wolves responded to Chernobyl’s cancer-causing radiation. Over time, they found that the wolves were consistently exposed to radiation that was six times higher than the legal limit for humans.
Love and Campbell-Stanton theorize that wolves are experiencing a rapid form of natural selection, possibly caused by equally rapid changes in their surrounding environment. Some wolves within the CEZ contain genes that are more resistant to cancer than others. While the chances of developing cancer are still the same, these tough canines aren’t too affected, allowing them to pass on those genes to the next generation.
“Overall, we found that the most rapidly evolving regions at Chernobyl were within and around genes that we know play a role in cancer immune responses or anti-tumor immune responses in mammals,” Campbell-Stanton told NPR.
While the data suggests there are clear genetic reasons behind CEZ wolves’ cancer-resistant abilities, Campbell-Stanton is quick to point out that the wolves are also free of other biological stressors—especially human stress. The team is now working with cancer experts to see how these results could impact human health.
For decades, Chernobyl has been described as a huge ecological disaster (it really Yes), but over the past decade, the CEZ has also looked increasingly like an unprecedented scientific opportunity.
You may also like
