Do insects get cancer

Answer 1

This is quite a coincidence.

The first day I worked in the fly lab, I asked my postdoc this exact

question, and he gave the answer you suggested - that insects don't live

long enough to get cancer. However, you raise a good point. Do long-lived

insects get cancer?

It's definitely possible to cause even short-lived insects to get cancer

by mutagenizing them. The fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster only lives

three weeks, but a paper came out in _Cell_ on the subject of fruit fly

cancer just last month. [1] The researchers discovered a mutant fruit fly

that spontaneously develops tumors.

So, given that some mutations can cause insects to get cancer, it should

be possible for any insect that lives long enough to develop such

mutations to get cancer. And given the large numbers of insects in, say, a

termite mound, and the number of genes that could produce uncontrolled

cell division when mutated, cancer seems not only possible, but probable.

We just don't notice a few termites more or less.

(An excellent question, by the way. Insects are excellent model systems,

and knowledge about spontaneous cancer in insects could prove extremely

useful.)