title: Evolutionary constraints over microsatellite abundance in larger mammals as a potential mechanism against carcinogenic burden.
abstract: Larger organisms tend to live longer, have more potentially carcinogenic cells, and undergo more cell divisions. While one might intuitively expect cancer incidence to scale with body size, this assertion does not hold over the range of different mammals. Explaining this lack of correlation, so-called 'Peto's paradox' can likely increase our understanding of how cancer defense mechanisms are shaped by natural selection. Here, we study the occurrence of microsatellite in mammal genomes and observe that animals with expanded body size restrain the number of microsatellite. To take into account of higher mutation rate in the microsatellite region compared to that of genome, limiting the abundance of somatic mutations might explain how larger organisms could overcome the burden of cancer. These observations may serve as the basis to better understand how evolution has modeled protective mechanisms against cancer development.
authors.affiliation: Biotechnology Research Division, National Fisheries Research &Development Institute, Gijang gun, Busan, 619-705, Republic of Korea.
authors.forename: Jung Youn
authors.initials: JY
authors.lastname: Park
authors.affiliation: Cetacean Research Institute, National Fisheries Research &Development Institute, Nam-gu, Ulsan 680-050, Republic of Korea.
authors.forename: Yong-Rock
authors.initials: YR
authors.lastname: An
authors.affiliation: Biotechnology Research Division, National Fisheries Research &Development Institute, Gijang gun, Busan, 619-705, Republic of Korea.
authors.forename: Chul-Min
authors.initials: CM
authors.lastname: An
authors.affiliation: Biotechnology Research Division, National Fisheries Research &Development Institute, Gijang gun, Busan, 619-705, Republic of Korea.
authors.forename: Jung-Ha
authors.initials: JH
authors.lastname: Kang
authors.affiliation: Biotechnology Research Division, National Fisheries Research &Development Institute, Gijang gun, Busan, 619-705, Republic of Korea.
authors.forename: Eun Mi
authors.initials: EM
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.affiliation: Department of Agricultural Biotechnology, Seoul National University, Seoul 151-921, Republic of Korea.|Interdisciplinary Program in Bioinformatics, Seoul National University, Seoul 151-742, Republic of Korea.|C&K Genomics, Seoul National University Research Park, Seoul 151-919, Republic of Korea.
authors.forename: Heebal
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.affiliation: C&K Genomics, Seoul National University Research Park, Seoul 151-919, Republic of Korea.
authors.forename: Seoae
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Cho
authors.affiliation: National Human Genome Research Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda MD 20892, USA.
authors.forename: Jaemin
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Kim
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D049628:Body Size; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D006801:Humans; D008322:Mammals; D018895:Microsatellite Repeats; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000235:genetics*; D012641:Selection, Genetic