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DNA Sequenced of Woman Who Lived To 115
chrb writes "The DNA of W115 — an anonymous woman who lived to the age of 115 years and left her body to science — has been sequenced. Despite her old age, W115 showed no signs of dementia or heart disease, and tests at the age of 113 showed she had the mental abilities of a woman aged 60-75 years. Dr. Henne Holstege of the Department of Clinical Genetics at the VU University Medical Center in Amsterdam has suggested W115 had rare genetic changes in her DNA which protected against Alzheimer's and other late-life diseases."
Back when I was her age, 115 was just getting started! Now get off my lawn!
The CB App. What's your 20?
Hopefully this leads to people being able to have their DNA modified so that we no longer have to deal with mental diseases like Alzheimer's.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrietta_Lacks
From the future. Just saying.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
People over the age of 90 are typically very healthy - people with bad health habits often die before 70, though a few last until their mid-80s. If you make it to 90, you've got a very good chance of making 100. In addition, healthy people usually have good intellects regardless of their age - I've met more than a few 90+ year olds who are quite sharp.
"Good news, everyone!"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hendrikje_van_Andel-Schipper#Genome
...and the social customs of the periods she lived through, she is almost certain to have been a smoker....
This was a women in the Netherlands. Only one female ever made it to the age of 115 ever in the Netherlands. Even though the results are officially anonymous, there is only one person that could have been the donor. By stating the age she died, they effectively gave away her identity.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Don't get your hopes up. You're all going to die, most sooner than you wish. Make the most of what you got... you apes.
She's the oldest Dutch person ever:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hendrikje_van_Andel-Schipper
The retirement home where she lived until her death is just a couple hundred meters away from where I work.
The thought of extending life for ppl. The interesting issue is that it would be more centered on the wealthy. And yet, these are some of the worst for those that trash out the planet. Says a lot.
She was my great aunt : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hendrikje_van_Andel-Schipper
She donated her body already at the age of 80-85. To be talking in /. terms, she open sourced her body. She gave it to science or in her words "Let students and doctors cut me into little pieces and let those youngsters find out why I became this old." She had yearly meetings with the doctor who told her the whole procedure of what would happen when she died.
That was also the reason some nurse was with her, so when the moment came, they would not loose any valuable time.
This is not disrespectful. This was her wish for more then 20 years.
The reason she is "anonymous" is because some idiots were claiming to be speaking of her behalf and said that a doctor could not bring out personal information regardless of the fact that this was the specific demand of the patient. Let the knowledge be spread. And knowing her, that would include her name as well.
As her closest family (my dad, born 1930 and still healthy) and myself are living in other countries, we did not know of this trouble. Otherwise at least I would have intervened.
I also like to donate my blood (or just DNA if it is a nice looking nurse) for the same research, but I am afraid it might end up with some sort of Monsanto. Scary that I am afraid of a company stealing my DNA when I want to give it to science.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Here in the Netherlands it was all over the news that Hendrikje van Andel-Schipper, a lady who died at age 115 and left her body to science, had speciale genes.
Time is short and we like it when the most important word appears first. Sorry but the ability to skim through a bunch of titles quickly trumps grammar.
Is it grammatically correct to say "DNA Sequenced of Woman Who Lived to 115?" I feel like it should say "DNA of Woman Who Lived to 115 Sequenced."
This is well-studied (e.g. by Dr. M. O. Bruker with over 50,000 patients over 50 years) and one of the biggest misconceptions people have.
Nearly all of the diseases we think of as age-related actually just come with decades of aggregated wrongdoing. And most of those are because of non-species-appopriate nutrition. Only a small rest is caused by genetics. Because most genetic errors express earlier.
But apparently, ignorance is alive and well in some scientists” too...
Barely on topic, but:
Anybody heard people say "old-timer's disease" instead of "Alzheimer's disease"?
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
"she had the mental abilities of a woman aged 60-75 years."
So basically, she was a 'tard?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
"Good news, everyone!"
"...I've fixed the poison slime pipes!"
This may be modded as flamebait, but I dunno if I want to have Alzheimer's treated by DNA modification.
My paternal grandma lives with us, and she is suffering from alzheimer's. It's is very painful, among other things, she does not recognise her own son and daughter-in-law, and thinks they are her father and mother, since she sees us call them dad and mom. So I know what it feels like, it's absolutely horrible and terrifying, and I don't ever want to go through that when I grow old.
But I don't know if DNA modification is the answer. I would never submit to that, nor would I submit my grandmother or any other family member to such a treatment. I would rather suffer Alzheimer, rather suffer some unknown side effect that could prove to be even worse, and may ironically not even cure alzeheimer!
I will readily agree it's a rather conservative view of mine, but I would rather we not mess with DNA.
Just my two cents.
I am an ACCA student. Got a query on Accountancy/Finance? Maybe I can help!
Plotting the difference in life expectancy (dle) by year for males, you see a couple .4 to nearly
of things. First, there's infant mortality at 0-3 years., so dle goes from
1 From 3 to 13 there's a small increase in life expectancy each year. Then a drop (?)
Then an increase from about 21 to 30, when males do stupid things. So every one of
those years you survive increases your life expectancy. Then there's a smooth curve
to about 100, then it tapers off, but always negative (i.e. every year gets you closer
to death, by varying amounts).
The curve does flatten out after 100, I guess you get beyond the diseases and
other failings and you're just wearing out.
See this: http://www.trouw.nl/tr/nl/6700/Wetenschap/article/detail/2969042/2011/10/15/Oudste-Nederlandse-vrouw-had-bijzondere-genen.dhtml
And translate for yourself.
We currently have this with our schools. You don't get to the top if you didn't go to the "right" school.
You know, I'm going to consider changing my sig to something like "Put monkeys into Congress" or something similar. You just got friended.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
Yep, changed it. May need some fine tuning.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
And tell all your cousins to get busy too. We need to replicate those genes regardless of weather we can figure out which ones caused it.
simple dietary and behavioral changes will make such diseases fleetingly rare.
It's obvious already. Finish a supersize meal or two at McD every day and you're unlikely to get Alzheimer's nor die of cancer.
p.s. meanwhile they should sequence the DNA of some of the ultra-obese, and figure out how they manage to get so fat ( > 500kg) without dying.
The problem with this hypothesis is that people ate healthy for many years, McDonalds and other unhealthy eating habits et al only came along relatively recently, and the percentage of very long-lived people has been unchanged. Through history, Alzheimers and senior dementia has always appeared in the elderly population, no matter how healthy they ate and how much exercise they got. Studies have shown that dietary and exercise good or bad habits can only change your expected genetic lifespan by about 5 years (barring accidental death).
My family lives until their mid-90s, then drops. Thin members of my family, fat members of my family,smokers, drinkers, it makes no difference. My great-grandmother smoked two packs a day until the day she dropped at age 94, my grandmother was always overweight, and just turned 91. Her sister was an organic gardener and is 89 (they look nearly identical now as age-related drops in my grandmother's appetite has dropped my grandmother's weight)
By the way, they have sequenced the DNA of the ultra-obese, and found there are DNA changes that trigger changes in the metabolism, prevent the release of a hormone that tells you when you're full, and other things. So far they have found quite a few DNA markers that affect weight, in both directions.
Having her sequence information doesn't really help to identify any mutation that might affect aging. You need a lot of subjects with the same phenotype (and you don't really know what the phenotype is) before you can start to identify the gene(s) you are looking for.
An 80 year old grandmother takes two of her grandchildren (ages 4 and 6) for a walk in the park. They are the only ones in the park. What is the average age of the people in the park? And is there anyone in the park within 20 years of that average age?
The low expected lifespans in previous years was due mostly to the fact that half of all children died before they reached 15 or so. The adults lived almost as long as we do on average. Very few people died in their 30's and 40's. Please re-think your conclusions in light of these facts.
T
Laws are horrible moral guides, moral guides make even worse laws.
Just so you know, everyone reading your post knows you're full of it.
Does anyone know what her diet was?
Where?
rollmops and advocaat with cream?
It took me all of 5 minutes to figure out the identity of the woman. There are very, very few women who live to be 115, and Wikipedia has a comprehensive list of them. Since 2006, only three women have died at the age of 115. The BBC article says the women entered assisted living at the age of 105. I tried cross referencing that with their Wikipedia biographies, and bam - "She lived on her own until 1999 when she was 105 years old, and resided at the Western Convalescent Home in Jefferson Park, Los Angeles until her death." The identify of the woman is Gertrude Baines.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
If we can find out how to get this gene to appear in everybody, we could get to push the new age lifespan of humans to be 150....no?
Is there any science concerning her? All I saw in the BBC News story is speculation.
Ever tried to kill a vagina?