Elephant APOBEC3A cytidine deaminase induces massive double-stranded DNA breaks and apoptosis

The incidence of developing cancer should increase with the body mass, yet is not the case, a conundrum referred to as Peto’s paradox. Elephants have a lower incidence of cancer suggesting that these animals have probably evolved different ways to protect themselves against the disease. The paradox is worth revisiting with the realization that most mammals encode an endogenous APOBEC3 cytidine deaminase capable of mutating single stranded DNA....