Scientists at Liverpool University and Norwich’s Genome Analysis Centre have generated the DNA sequence belonging to the East African rodent, which has an inbuilt resistance to tumours and can live for 30 years.

The scientists believe that the study will help increase understanding about why cancers develop and spread in ageing bodies. Scientists have suggested earlier that rat’s cells have a tumour resistant capacity absent in other rodents or in humans.

Dr Joao Pedro Magalhaes, from the university’s institute of integrative biology, said that the long life span of the rodent is a recent discovery. Other similar sized mice have a life span of four years.

“We aim to use the naked mole-rat genome to understand the level of resistance it has to disease, particularly cancer. This might give us more clues as to why some animals and humans are more prone to disease than others,” he said.