News that scientists have discovered what enables the naked mole-rat to live for up to 37 years — around ten times longer than relatives of a similar size — raises a troublesome question for creationists. The findings were reported recently in Science by a team of researchers from the Shanghai Key Laboratory of Maternal Fetal Medicine.
Creationists like to flatter themselves with the notion that they are the favoured creation of their putative designer god and the ultimate expression of design perfection. So, when evidence emerges of other species surpassing humans in some way — bats with more robust immune systems, elephants and sharks being almost completely immune to cancers, peregrine falcons with far superior vision — it is typically ignored, met with incredulity, or dismissed as an ineffable mystery and part of some divine plan which in no way diminished the unique position of humans in the grand scheme.
Now, to add to their woes, comes the discovery that the secret of the naked mole-rat’s extraordinary longevity may be traced to changes in just four amino acids. This alone undermines creationist claims that mutations are always harmful and incapable of generating new genetic information.
The naked mole rat.According to Discovery Institute fellow William A. Dembski, genetic information of this kind constitutes “complex specified information,” which, he asserts, can only come from an intelligent designer. If that were true, we would be left with the inescapable conclusion that Dembski’s intelligent designer could have given humans the same longevity genes as naked mole-rats but chose not to — just as it could have given us the cancer resistance of elephants and sharks, but again chose not to. For some “ineffable reason,” it would seem to be part of a divine plan that naked mole-rats live ten times longer than their closest relatives.The naked mole-rat, Heterocephalus glaber, is one of the most remarkable mammals known to science. Despite its unassuming appearance, it possesses a combination of biological traits that challenge many assumptions about mammalian physiology, ageing, pain perception, and even social structure.
Below is a comprehensive overview of this extraordinary species:
Taxonomy and Classification
- Scientific name: Heterocephalus glaber
- Common name: Naked mole-rat
- Family: Bathyergidae (African mole-rats)
- Order: Rodentia
- Natural habitat: Semi-arid regions of East Africa, particularly Ethiopia, Somalia, and Kenya.
- Conservation status: Least Concern (IUCN), though populations are localised.
Physical Characteristics
- Size: Adults are typically 8–10 cm long, weighing 30–35 g, with queens reaching up to 50 g.
- Appearance: They lack a substantial fur coat, giving them their “naked” name, though they have a few sensory whiskers and fine hairs on their tails. Their skin is pinkish, wrinkled, and almost translucent.
- Teeth: They have large, protruding incisors used for digging, and these can move independently. Their lips close behind the teeth, allowing them to tunnel without ingesting soil.
Habitat and Ecology
Naked mole-rats live entirely underground in complex tunnel systems, sometimes stretching over 3–5 km. These subterranean networks provide protection from predators and environmental extremes.
- Temperature: They live in thermally stable environments and have poor thermoregulation, relying on behavioural means (e.g., clustering) to maintain body temperature.
- Diet: Primarily herbivorous, feeding on underground tubers and roots. Remarkably, they can eat part of a tuber without killing it, allowing it to regrow — a sustainable food source.
- Oxygen: They tolerate extremely low oxygen and high CO₂ levels thanks to specialised haemoglobin and metabolic adaptations.
Social Structure: A Eusocial Mammal
Naked mole-rats are one of only two known eusocial mammals (the other being Damaraland mole-rat). Their social system resembles that of ants, bees, and termites.
- Queen: A single breeding female monopolises reproduction. She is physically larger, and her vertebrae elongate during her reproductive reign.
- Breeders: 1–3 males may mate with the queen.
- Workers: Most colony members are sterile and take on specialised roles — digging tunnels, foraging, caring for young, and defending the colony.
- Colony size: Typically 70–80 individuals, though some colonies exceed 300.
Longevity and Ageing
One of the most extraordinary traits of naked mole-rats is their exceptional lifespan.
- Lifespan: Up to 37 years in captivity — roughly ten times longer than other rodents of similar size.
- Cancer resistance: They are remarkably resistant to cancer, partly due to mechanisms involving high-molecular-mass hyaluronan, efficient DNA repair, and a hypersensitive contact inhibition system.
- Delayed ageing: They show negligible senescence — very little decline in physiological function with age. Many individuals remain fertile and active into their third decade.
- Recent research: A 2025 study found that their enhanced DNA repair capacity may be linked to changes in just four amino acids affecting the cGAS–STING pathway, bolstering genomic maintenance and delaying ageing.
Physiology and Unique Adaptations
- Pain insensitivity: Naked mole-rats are insensitive to certain types of pain, such as that caused by acid and capsaicin, due to mutations affecting pain receptors.
- Hypoxia tolerance: They can survive up to 18 minutes without oxygen by switching to a fructose-based metabolic pathway — an ability almost unheard of in mammals.
- Low metabolic rate: Their slow metabolism is well adapted to their low-oxygen subterranean environment.
- Thermoregulation: Unlike most mammals, they are essentially poikilothermic (cold-blooded), adjusting their body temperature behaviourally rather than physiologically.
Reproduction
- Breeding: Only the queen reproduces. She gives birth to litters of 10–30 pups after a gestation of around 70 days.
- Parental care: Workers assist in rearing the young. Pups mature sexually after about a year, but only a few ever breed.
- Reproductive suppression: Non-breeding females are hormonally suppressed through behavioural dominance by the queen.
Research Significance
Naked mole-rats have become a model organism in multiple research fields:
- Ageing research: Their longevity and negligible senescence offer insights into mechanisms of healthy ageing.
- Cancer biology: Their cancer resistance is a promising area for therapeutic development.
- Neuroscience and pain: Their unique pain insensitivity informs research on chronic pain and sensory processing.
- Physiology: Their tolerance to hypoxia has implications for stroke, heart attack, and anaesthesia research.
- Evolutionary biology: Their eusociality provides a rare example of insect-like social evolution in mammals.
Cultural and Scientific Interest
Though hardly charismatic by conventional standards, naked mole-rats have attracted attention in both popular culture and science communication as an emblem of “weird but wonderful” evolution. They feature prominently in discussions about ageing, natural selection, and the diversity of mammalian adaptations.
And it gets even more problematic for creationists because the mutation occurs in the protein enzyme cyclic GMP–AMP synthase (cGAS). In humans, cGAS inhibits the DNA repair mechanism known as homologous recombination (HR), thereby promoting ageing and increasing the risk of cancer. In the naked mole-rat, however, the mutated form of cGAS not only allows HR to continue but actually enhances it.
From an Intelligent Design perspective, this means we are apparently looking at an enzyme that has been deliberately “designed” to accelerate ageing and increase cancer risk in humans, while the same ‘designer’ has endowed the naked mole-rat with a version improved through just four amino acid substitutions.
The research is the subject of a news release through EurekAlert!.
The secret to naked mole-rat’s longevity: Enhanced DNA repair
The secret to the naked mole-rats’ extraordinarily long life may lie in subtle changes to just four amino acids, researchers report. According to a new study, evolutionary mutations in cGAS – an enzyme in the innate immune system that senses DNA to trigger immune responses – may enhance the animal’s ability to repair aging-related genetic damage, whereas in other species, such as mice and humans, cGAS can suppress DNA repair.
Wrinkled and unassuming though they appear, the naked mole-rat (Heterocephalus glaber) is an exceptionally long-lived rodent, with a maximum life span of nearly 40 years – roughly 10 times longer than similarly sized species. Moreover, the creatures’ genetic makeup is surprisingly closer to humans than to mice, which makes it a valuable model for studying the molecular mechanisms underlying the species’ longevity. One key aspect of long life is genome stability. However, the ways naked mole-rats maintain DNA integrity, particularly through repair mechanisms, remain poorly understood. Homologous recombination (HR) is a critical DNA repair pathway, and defects in HR are linked to premature aging. In humans and mice, the DNA sensor cGAS (cyclic guanosine monophosphate–adenosine monophosphate synthase) can suppress HR repair, potentially promoting cancer and shortening lifespan.
Yu Chen and colleagues investigated whether cGAS similarly inhibits HR in long-lived naked mole-rats. Chen et al. found that, in naked mole-rats, four specific amino acid substitutions in mole-rat cGAS reduce ubiquitination and degradation, allowing the protein to persist for longer and at higher levels after DNA damage. This increased abundance strengthens interactions with key repair factors, FANCI and RAD50, thereby boosting HR repair. When cGAS was depleted from naked mole-rat cells, DNA damage accumulated. The authors further showed that fruit flies engineered to express human cGAS containing the four naked mole-rat–specific mutations lived longer than flies expressing unaltered human cGAS. The findings suggest that these specific evolutionary amino acid mutations in naked mole-rat cGAS not only enhance DNA repair but may also contribute directly to the extraordinary longevity of the species. “The findings from Chen et al. describe an unexpected role for naked mole-rat cGAS in the nucleus that influences longevity, write John Martinez and colleagues in a related Perspective. “Further research will be required to establish the roles that cGAS may play in the nucleus in other organisms, both short- and long-lived, but the answer may be substantially more complex than originally predicted.”
Publication:
Structured AbstractThe implications of this discovery are clear. A single, relatively minor mutation — involving just four amino acids — has resulted in a fundamental difference in how two mammalian species handle DNA damage. In one, humans, the enzyme contributes to ageing and increased cancer risk; in the other, the naked mole rat, it enhances DNA repair and so extends lifespan and reduces the risk of cancers. This is a textbook example of how small, natural genetic changes can lead to profound biological consequences, without invoking any supernatural agency.
INTRODUCTION
The naked mole-rat (Heterocephalus glaber) is an extraordinarily long-lived rodent with a maximum life span of ∼37 years. Although its exceptional longevity is thought to result from a combination of adaptations affecting diverse biological processes, the molecular mechanisms protecting the naked mole-rat from genomic instability—a primary hallmark of aging—remain unclear.
RATIONALE
DNA repair constitutes a crucial mechanism for stabilizing the genome. Earlier studies have demonstrated that the DNA sensor cyclic guanosine monophosphate–adenosine monophosphate synthase (cGAS) participates in regulating DNA double-strand break repair by suppressing the homologous recombination (HR) pathway, thereby promoting genomic instability. Although enhanced function of DNA repair proteins contributes to the evolution of longevity, it remains unexplored whether evolution has selected for the attenuation of negative regulators such as cGAS.
RESULTS
In a panel of assays, we found that naked mole-rat cGAS, in contrast to human and mouse cGAS, enhanced HR repair efficiency. This functional reversal is mediated by the substitution of four specific amino acid residues within the C-terminal domain of the cGAS protein. Mechanistically, this amino acid alteration enabled naked mole-rat cGAS to prolong its retention on chromatin in the wake of DNA damage by modulating its ubiquitination status, thereby altering its interaction with the segregase P97. The prolonged presence of naked mole-rat cGAS on chromatin facilitated the formation of a complex between the canonical HR factor RAD50 and FANCI, a factor primarily associated with the Fanconi anemia pathway. We further demonstrated that FANCI promoted the chromatin recruitment of RAD50, thereby potentiating HR repair. Consequently, naked mole-rat cGAS attenuated stress-induced cellular senescence, mitigated organ degeneration, and extended life span in fruit flies. Critically, reverting these four amino acid residues abolished these protective effects. Furthermore, adeno-associated virus–mediated delivery of naked mole-rat cGAS to aged mice reduced frailty, attenuated hair graying, lowered circulating levels of immunoglobulin G and interleukin-6, and decreased cellular senescence markers in multiple tissues. Once again, these beneficial effects were dependent on the four specific amino acids.
CONCLUSION
Using comparative molecular biology, our work reveals that the negative regulatory function of cGAS in HR repair is reversed in the longest-lived rodent, the naked mole-rat, by an alteration of four specific amino acid residues. This alteration confers naked mole-rat cGAS with a greater capacity to stabilize the genome, counteract cellular senescence and organ aging, and promote extended life span and health span.
Divergent cGAS function in naked mole-rats.
The cGAS-mediated suppression of homologous recombination repair is reversed in the longest-lived rodent, the naked mole-rat. Four amino acid changes maintain its cGAS at a low level of ubiquitination after DNA damage, conferring prolonged chromatin binding (E, Glu; S, Ser; T, Thr; Y, Tyr). This facilitates FANCI and RAD50 interaction, enhancing HR repair. These molecular changes contribute to reduced cellular senescence, delayed organ aging, and life-span extension. [Figure created with BioRender.com]
Abstract
Efficient DNA repair might make possible the longevity of naked mole-rats. However, whether they have distinctive mechanisms to optimize functions of DNA repair suppressors is unclear. We find that naked mole-rat cyclic guanosine monophosphate–adenosine monophosphate synthase (cGAS) lacks the suppressive function of human or mouse homologs in homologous recombination repair through the alteration of four amino acids during evolution. The changes enable cGAS to retain chromatin longer upon DNA damage by weakening TRIM41-mediated ubiquitination and interaction with the segregase P97. Prolonged chromatin binding of cGAS enhanced the interaction between repair factors FANCI and RAD50 to facilitate RAD50 recruitment to damage sites, thereby potentiating homologous recombination repair. Moreover, the four amino acids mediate the function of cGAS in antagonizing cellular and tissue aging and extending life span. Manipulating cGAS might therefore constitute a mechanism for life-span extension.
Yu Chen et al.
A cGAS-mediated mechanism in naked mole-rats potentiates DNA repair and delays aging.
Science 390, eadp5056 (2025). DOI:10.1126/science.adp5056
© 2025 American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Reprinted under the terms of s60 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
For evolutionary biologists, this finding simply illustrates how selection can favour traits that confer a survival advantage, in this case by extending lifespan and reproductive capacity. For creationists and proponents of Intelligent Design, however, it raises awkward theological and logical questions. If an intelligent designer was responsible, why deliberately “design” humans to age and develop cancer more readily, while granting naked mole rats a mechanism to resist both?
Once again, what science reveals is not evidence of perfect design, but of evolutionary tinkering — the adaptive modification of existing structures and processes over time. The naked mole-rat’s longevity is not the result of a benevolent plan but of natural genetic variation and selection acting on a unique ecological niche. Far from demonstrating special creation, this discovery adds to the ever-growing mountain of evidence that life evolves through natural processes, and that human beings are not the pinnacle of any grand design, but simply one branch of the tree of life.
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