A coral reef with a barrel sponge in Indonesia
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Sponges can dwell for thousands of years, develop repeatedly and lack an immune machine, so that they wants to be in particular susceptible to cancers. But sponges exposed to X-rays own survived 100 times the lethal dose for humans without tumours.
“They look like extraordinarily proof against radiation,” says Angelo Fortunato at Arizona Voice College. Undoubtedly, sponges own the finest stage of radiation resistance ever observed in any animal whose cells attend dividing right thru its lifetime – as against creatures admire tardigrades whose cells halt dividing.
Fortunato’s crew has been learning …
