gilded retriever are one of our most popular canine tooth companions , but it ’s an inauspicious fact that they also have a gamey peril of drop dead from Cancer the Crab . However , a new study has identified a factor often associated with cancer that may also hold the key to helping goldens last for longer .

It ’s a pretty heartbreakingstatistic – golden retriever have up to a 65 percent chance of dying from Crab . Nevertheless , there are sight that also live a foresightful and healthy living , so a team of researchers from the University of California , Davis , sought to find out what it was that made this difference .

“ We assume that the majority of golden retriever have a transmissible predisposition to Cancer the Crab , but if some of them are living to be 14 , 15 or 16 , we thought there could be another genetic factor that is helping to mitigate the bad gene , and the cistron that popped out for us isHER4 , ” said study writer Robert Rebhun , in astatement .

research worker identify this gene as important by analyzing the deoxyribonucleic acid of 304 gold retrievers , specifically compare any remainder betweendogsthat were alive at 14 years of eld with those that die before they turned 12 .

They found that goldens with sure variants of the cistron lived for , on average , about two year longer . “ Almost two years is a significant difference in a dog ’s lifetime , ” say co - corresponding author Danika Bannasch . “ Would n’t we all require our dear pet to live another two years ? Two years in goldens is about a 15 - 20 % increment in life-time , the equivalent of 12 - 14 years in homo . ”

The difference could be down to the mapping ofHER4 – its related protein is a penis of a fellowship of human epidermal ontogeny factor receptors , which receive signal that tell cell to proliferate . As a result , they ’re often associated with the rapid cell growth and replication seen in human cancer . HER2 , for example , is often over - expressed in humanbreast genus Cancer .

detent get many of the same cancers as human race do , so the field ’s results could be valuable for both coinage . “ If we find that this variant inHER4is important either in the establishment or progression of cancer in golden retrievers , or if it can actually modify a Cancer the Crab risk in this malignant neoplastic disease predisposed population , that may be something that can be used in future Crab studies in mankind , ” Rebhun explicate .

However , cancer is a complex disease , and the study ’s authors said that further enquiry is required to solve the teaser of genus Cancer in golden retrievers . Existingresearchhas witness that HER4 can interact with estrogen , which could be linked to the current study ’s finding thatHER4variants seemed to be the most important for the longevity of distaff dogs versus male dog .

The researchers suggested that future study should use a much larger routine ofgolden retrievers , seek to reproduce the results of exist research in dog , and bring out how the variant pick up in the current study may touch the gene ’s expression and function .

“ There are going to be many cistron take , but the fact that the gene associated with longevity is also a gene involved in cancer was really interesting to us , ” concluded Bannasch .

The cogitation is published in the journalGeroScience .