“As you copy DNA over and over and over again, you can get mistakes or changes,” says David. “But gars have something in there that when a mutation pops up, it gets corrected.”
David likens the process like a game of telephone that plays out over the millennia. When most organisms play it, the phrase whispered at the beginning changes over time until it takes on a totally different character by the end. But when gar play, the phrase remains nearly the same.
“If we can isolate what that is—and we’ve got some ideas as to what gene that might be—we can then take it to the next step of thinking about implications for human medicine and disease,” says David, who already breeds gar for use as model organisms.
For instance, if whatever is correcting those mutations can be replicated in human bodies, it could potentially prevent or counteract diseases such as cancer, the result of shortcomings in DNA repair and cell growth run amok.
If it all works out, there would be a delicious bit of irony for David, who spends a lot of time trying to change minds about fish that have long been persecuted for being ugly and of no commercial value.
“These fish that have been mistreated and considered ‘trash fish,’” he says, “may end up turning around and actually being extremely valuable to us from a human health perspective.”
Dr. Thomas Hughes is a UK-based scientist and science communicator who makes complex topics accessible to readers. His articles explore breakthroughs in various scientific disciplines, from space exploration to cutting-edge research.
