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Researchers Analyze DNA From 'Supercentenarians' Aged 110+ To Discover Secret To Longevity (nytimes.com)
biobricks writes: Scientists looking for clues to healthy longevity in people in their 90s and 100s haven't turned up a whole lot. It is thought that the DNA of the very old may be a good place to look, but people over 110 are one in five million in the United States. The New York Times chronicles one scientific quest to collect their DNA (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source). From the report: "James Clement, a self-described 'citizen-scientist,' has collected blood, skin and saliva samples from individuals aged 110-plus in 14 states and seven countries during the past six years, The New York Times reports. Mr. Clement has detected 2,500-plus differences between supercentenarian DNA and the general population. However, with a sample size of only some three dozen genomes, his team is still working to determine which genes are significant. One analysis suggested supercentenarians tended to inherit fewer genetic variations related to conditions like heart disease and Alzheimer's disease. However, since supercentenarians also tend to be more healthy than the general population, some researchers hypothesize there are other genetic benefits at play. For example, supercentenarians may boast genes that protect them from aspects of aging." Mr. Clement plans to release DNA sequences from the project, called the New England Centenarian Study, this month.
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I applaud your cleverness, but you don't actually have to cite fiction to find a written record of the existence of a blood line of the type to which you allude. The word you're looking for is Nephilim.
I thought you said not to cite fiction.
What are you on about? They didn't give them longevity. They just took samples from people who were already old.
So I take it that possibly unlocking the secret to longer lives is of no benefit to society?
What is your benefit to society? And if you care so much about giving benefits to society, WHO gets them? Are you a socialist?
Old people are a drain on society. They suck up social security and medicare that young people have siphoned from their paychecks.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
I suspect it is reversed to a large extent.
That is, the super-centagarians are not healthy because of genetics, but instead it is impossible to become a supercetagarian unless you are lucky enough to be healthy.
If for example you get infected with pneumonia and survive, it would not surprise me that it would weaken your lungs by say 4% and you end up dying at 80. If you never got the pneumonia you might have lived to 101 merely because you had 100% lung functionality.
Being healthy makes you live longer, it is not always a sign of lack of bad mutations..
In fact, sometimes bad genetic mutations can make you live longer.
Good example are the dwarfs of Ecuador that have Laron Syndrome http://discovermagazine.com/20.... They are basically immune to cancer and diabetes, but suffer convulsive disorders (and also are short).
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I'm entirely certain genetics help but anyone living past 100 is quite likely living off of dumb luck.
The universe is a chaotic place after all.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
I think this is an interesting avenue of study but when I read:
James Clement, a self-described 'citizen-scientist,'
I get wary to the point of being totally turned off. Pretty soon I would expect to start getting banner ads for some new "miracle supplement" or something like that after after reading it. It wouldn't be bad to be wrong about this but the track record...
Even Universities and well-funded corporation get huckster scientists. The guy doing it alone by definition doesn't have the institutional filters in place to keep pipe dreams and wishful thinking at bay.
Are you volunteering to kill yourself before you get old?
Cuban cigars and 16+ year old single malt, I don't wanna live tp be that old...
And environment too.
Genetics is just a face of the coin.
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
Excuse me but in most developed countries the older people are "supposed" to have paid into the system - Pensions, social security or whatever name-of-choice the country has, and are supposed to be taking the things they have been promised in exchange of paying into the system for over 4 decades.
If your country over-promised (...perhaps YOU let your politicians) and basic welfare turns into a ponzi scheme it's a problem with overspending and politicians that promised you the moon letting future generations hanging. Getting old is not a sin in itself.
And I'm not even to calling you out for your old vs. young people broad brush yet, the same can be said of those un/underemployed youngsters who receive more than they pay into the system. Are you ready to call low-income earners blood-suckers of the society?
Aging is universal, so long lived animal species may turn up even better clues to aging, better hurry, they're disappearing fast, who knows, the species with that key clue may already be gone.
There is no "lucky enough to be healthy". Healthy, in a normal species, especially apex, should be average. Otherwise we never got to where we're going.
Ultimately, it's the diet. That's 95% of our contact with the outside world. And if you look at these supercentenarians and centenarians in general, you'll probably see that they ate a spectrum of a plant-based diet and ate little if any meat. Especially processed meat. It's why Okinawans studied in the 1940s were so healthy and long-lived (over 85% of their calories from sweet potatoes on average irrc), less than 5% from meat/fish/etc. It's also why they're so unhealthy these days, after the youth embraced western McDonalds and the like.
One factor is calorie restriction. Calorie restriction extends the life of a wide variety of lab animals studied. That's seems to because lab animals restricted start eating calories on the order of their in-the-wild counterparts (but with little of the stressors). Humans these days, like lab animals, are ad libitum. Plant foods typically have low calorie density to make someone feel full at lower caloric cost. Then there are issues of helpful fiber, phytonutrients, etc that plants have and the good gut bacteria they promote along with a million other things. And deleterious bioaccumulation, TMAO, diseases that can cross animal-human boundary, and a million other things meat and dairy have.
Studying for anomalous genes is like studying the make of all the million mile engines while ignoring the drivers drove long distances at a stretch, changed oil punctually, had relatively slow acceleration/decelerations, etc. It would be one thing if humans had all different engines, but we do not. Physiologically, we're all extremely similiar. For instance, we all breathe air. None of us run on methane, for instance.
Normal genetics might account for a few percent, but you can't give a city-driving Michael Schumacher-wannabe, that avoids mechanics since they're all trying to cheat him, a supposed million-mile rated engine and expect it to have the same lifetime. Modern Okinawans have the same exact "super genes" their grandparents have and they're the sickest of the Japanese population.
This is a study in futility, promising people gains that futilely won't appear.
Living 43+ years after retirement age -- paying for rent/property tax, food, utilities, and medical care -- adds up!
I think it would be important to weight each person's DNA sequence inversely to the level of medical interventions they required in their lifetimes and also somewhat inversely to their wealth (depending on some estimation of whether their wealth was acquired by virtue of their genetic merit (intelligence, strength, beauty) or by non-genetic circumstances (inheritance, lottery, lucky investment)). This would yield a better estimation of the relative importance of the various genes. Really, any effort to weight each person's genes according to a rough estimation (based on considering their actual life story) of how much their genes accounted for their longevity would be better than considering them equally.
There will certainly be genetic factors. To the comments about longevity being luck, of course that plays a role. Want to live to 100, don't get hit by a train, duh. Lot of illness is driven by luck. If you have a gene that makes you prone to cancer, that's no guarantee that you will get cancer. However, the fact remains that your chances of longevity are a lot better without that gene.
There have been some experiments with simpler life forms (fruit flies, iirc), where - in surprisingly few generations - they were able to triple the average lifespan through planned breeding. The selection criteria was simply to breed the critters as late as possible in their lives. In any case, the results are pretty clear proof that genetics play a decisive role in longevity.
Who has read Heinlein's novel Methusalah's Children? The premise of the book was that someone had created a legacy - a couple of centuries ago - to encourage certain people to marry and have children (selected, iirc, by their grandparents' longevity). Based on what we know today, this would be entirely possible and reasonable. Equally possible and reasonable was the inevitable resentment felt by the rest of the human race, towards people who lived for hundreds of years. No one wants their neighbor to be smarter, richer or healthier than they, themselves are - humans rejoice in Schadenfreude, but we don't even have a word for the reverse.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
Is what you get when the industry fires people at the age of 50 and you want to live to 110.
Stay thin. I see a lot more pictures of old healthy thin people than of old healthy fat people.
My father in law is in his 90s and all he does is sit around and watch Judge Judy. If you find a way to extend your 30s maybe sign me up.
I am related to Henny van Andel-Schipper
When she was born, the doctors told her she would not be older than 6 weeks and her mother should forget about her. She was held warm by her grand mother. She lived at home till in her 40-ies and ran away from home then with a man that was divorced.
As a kid she was often sick. When she became older (80), she decided to give her body to the local University, so not to bother family and/or friends with a funeral.
When she became older than 100, there was a change in interest. It was not anymore about just another body for autopsy lessons. It became serious. She was looked at on a regular basis and when she died at the age of 115, there was a process to replace her blood as soon as possible.
Not only did they discover that their was no trace of Alzheimer anywhere, they found some other stuff about aging as well.
She was also the reason why they started a centenarian process in The Netherlands to as more people who are older than 100 to donate their bodies.
Her real answer on getting old where : keep breathing and don't die. Somebody has to be the oldest and this time it is me. As if she was saying that correlation was not the same as causation.
I have read a bit about real old people and what is evident is that all are positive minded.
So think about donating your body to science or, to put it in a way you would better understand: Open Source your remains. Because why not?
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
They should analyze the Millenials. 1000 is greater than 100.
There's no profit to you, a person so shallow you only think of other people in terms of how they benefit you. There's plenty of benefit to the person living longer.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
They take better care of themselves? Better air? Food? Why assume genetics? Oh yeah, that's because we need science to quantify superiority but make it about something we all care about as to not raise suspicion. Now why does that sound familiar...
That's why no one survives. ~ QotSA
I tend to rant.
You must be one of those who hate your own parents and/or got bullied to no end by older family members.
You have to believe in the possibility that there's old people that have been good. They worked hard all their life and loved their kids, and raised them properly. Now they are old and can't contribute as much to the society.
If your family was a mess and you've been mistreated is not everybody's fault. Old people deserve respect not THAT, whatever else you think they deserve.
Old people are a drain on society. They suck up social security and medicare that young people have siphoned from their paychecks.
To express the idea of Social Security in a way that you young whippersnappers will understand, it's just like those times when you're at Starbucks and you pay for the person in line behind you.
Its Google rolling out a "23 and Me" option to tell you about your telomeres and that its getting shorter each year.
Jeanne Calment lived to be 122... outlived her husband, Daughter and Grandson .. her Daughter and Grandson died at 36
She was almost never ill, was active her entire life, smoked but only one or two cigarettes a day, and had a healthy diet
No-one else in her family was long lived
Puteulanus fenestra mortis
They read newspapers every day until their eyesight failed, and they listen to a lot of swing jazz music from the '30s.
Smoke.
Eat lots of Bacon.
Avoid Carbohydrates.
To express the idea of Social Security in a way that you young whippersnappers will understand, it's just like those times when you're at Starbucks and you pay for the person in line behind you.
No, because that would be your choice. Social Security is more like when you're at Starbucks and the person in line in front of you leaves you their bill, justifying it on the basis that the person in front of them did the same.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
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