its secret may assist prolong human lifespan

Encased in a blanket of blubber that’s practically half a metre thick, and with a behavior of smashing head-first by means of Arctic ice, the 80,000-kilogram bowhead whale doesn’t, at first look, appear a pure poster little one for well being and longevity.

What’s the key to residing to 100? Centenarian stem cells may provide clues

But one of many cetacean’s most spectacular stats seems to be its lifespan: generally residing for greater than 200 years, the bowhead whale (Balaena mysticetus) places humanity’s prized centenarians to disgrace. An investigation of the animal’s cells has now surfaced one cause for the bowhead’s capability to endure for hundreds of years with out succumbing to most cancers or different age-related illnesses: a cold-activated protein that helps to restore damaged DNA¹ .

“Everybody knows the bowhead whale is extremely long lived, but nobody knew why,” says Zhiyong Mao, a molecular biologist at Tongji University in Shanghai, China, who was not concerned within the examine. “This tells us that tackling DNA repair to improve genome stability is a very effective strategy to confer this extreme longevity.”

With additional work, the findings, which had been printed on 29 October in Nature, may additionally make clear methods to assist people dwell longer, he provides. When the whale protein was expressed in human cells, their capability to restore DNA improved.

No simple keeper

Researchers have typically turned to a menagerie of curiously long-lived animals, from bats to beavers to elephants, in the hunt for clues to an expansive lifespan. Earlier in October, for instance, Mao and his colleagues reported² that the bare mole rat, which may dwell for greater than 30 years — a exceptional feat for a rodent — additionally sports activities a souped-up DNA-repair protein.

The bowhead whale, nevertheless, is a very troublesome analysis topic. It is without doubt one of the largest animals on Earth; sustaining a number of in a laboratory isn’t an choice. And it’s endangered, which makes learning the animals within the wild a problem as properly.

But every autumn, Iñupiaq Inuit villages in northern Alaska are allowed to hunt bowhead whales. Hunters then put aside a number of tissue samples, and college students working with Vera Gorbunova, a co-author of the examine and a biologist on the University of Rochester in New York, who research ageing, make the lengthy trek north to select up the samples. “Courier service doesn’t go there,” says Gorbunova. “There are no roads.”

Fix-it protein