Mice carrying a naked mole rat gene lived 4.4% longer with less inflammation

Mice fitted with a single naked mole rat gene aged with less inflammation, fewer tumours, and a longer median life. The animals carried the rodent’s version of Has2, the gene that triggers production of a specific long-chain sugar called high molecular weight hyaluronic acid. Naked mole rats churn out unusually large amounts of this molecule and almost never develop cancer; the experiment asked whether mice could borrow the trick.

In a University of Rochester lab, biologists Vera Gorbunova and Andrei Seluanov inserted the naked mole rat Has2 gene into mouse embryos and tracked the resulting colony from birth to natural death. The modified mice had higher levels of the long-chain sugar in skin, gut, joints, and other tissues. Compared with ordinary mice, they showed 34 percent fewer spontaneous tumours in old age, less chemically induced skin cancer, lower inflammation across tissues, and a sturdier gut lining as they got older.

The headline number is modest in absolute terms — a 4.4 percent increase in median lifespan — but the biological footprint is broad. Hyaluronic acid is not exotic: it sits between cells throughout the body, lubricates joints, holds water in skin, and signals to the immune system. The naked mole rat version is unusual because the molecule is roughly five times longer than the mouse or human equivalent, and longer chains seem to dampen the inflammatory signalling that drives several diseases of ageing at once.

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The team built the animals using a transgenic technique that inserts the chosen DNA sequence at a fixed point in the genome and then breeds it through several mouse generations to stabilise the trait. Tissue samples were analysed for hyaluronan content, tumour counts were collected on autopsy, and lifespans were compared against control animals raised in the same conditions. That methodology is standard for ageing studies, which is part of why the result has held up under scrutiny.

The limits matter. This is a mouse study, not a human one, and a 4.4 percent shift in lifespan is small enough to disappear in noisier cohorts. The colony was a single one, in one institution, and the gene was over-expressed at higher than naked-mole-rat levels in some tissues, which can produce side effects of its own. Hyaluronic acid signalling also has dual edges — short fragments of the molecule can be pro-inflammatory, so the protective effect depends on the body actually maintaining the long form.

The forward edge of the work is now pharmacological. Several drug candidates are being designed to slow the enzymes that break long hyaluronic acid into shorter fragments, in effect mimicking the mole rat configuration without gene editing. Pre-clinical trials of these molecules are under way and are the closest path from rodent biology to a human therapy. The original Nature paper from the Rochester group appeared on 23 August 2023, and the lab confirmed in May 2026 that the colony is still being tracked into late life.

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