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Naked Mole Rats Defy Mortality Mathematics (discovermagazine.com)

Posted by msmash on from the stranger-things dept.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Naked mole rats are adorably ugly creatures that challenge what we think we know about aging. Naked mole rats can live to be 30 years old. Further, female mole rats show no signs of menopause, and remain highly fertile even into their final years of life. Neurogenesis in naked mole rats continues over two decades, and their hearts and bones don't seem to change significantly over time. They rarely get cancer. Hell, they can even live up to 18 minutes utterly deprived of oxygen.

[...] At Google's biotech company, Calico, in San Francisco, California, biologist Rochelle Buffenstein is looking to the naked survivors to unlock their secrets of aging. Buffenstein says naked mole rats violate to the Gompertz-Makeham law, and she has over 3,000 data points to back her conclusion. After reaching adulthood six months into their lives, a naked mole rat's mortality risk remained the same for the rest of its days her analysis revealed. Rather than grow exponentially, a naked mole rat's risk of death on any given day, no matter their point in life, hovered around 1 in 10,000. Surprisingly, their mortality risk even fell a little when they grew very old. In this sense, Buffenstein writes, naked mole rats have established themselves as "a non-aging mammal. This life-history trend is unprecedented for mammals," Buffenstein and colleagues wrote in a study published recently in the journal eLife.

6 of 320 comments (clear)

  1. Google by 110010001000 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    All the Google engineers are getting older and are looking for ways to extend their lives. And all your money won't another minute buy.

    1. Re:Google by SuricouRaven · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Money certainly can buy more life. It can't buy endless life - at least not yet - but a plentiful supply of money allows access to a lot of expensive treatments which will cure conditions that might kill a less-financed patient. Buying time, in a quite literal manner.

    2. Re:Google by avandesande · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Trying homeopathic BS doesn't count, no matter how expensive it is.

      --
      love is just extroverted narcissism
    3. Re:Google by cayenne8 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Tell that to Steve Jobs.

      Steve had the money AND the medical advice to try to help extend his life.

      However HE made the choice to ignore them and try more holistic types of tx...and waited too long to try more proven medical tx.

      He could likely still be alive if he'd listened to the original medical tx advice.

      Not that other sources and types of medicine aren't valuable, I believe they are, but when it comes to cancer, you need to try the prevailing medical recommendations there, you don't fuck with the big "C"...

      --
      Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
    4. Re:Google by 110010001000 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Your outlook changes as you get older. When you get in your 80s and 90s death isn't seen as such as bad thing. But thanks for admitting you are self-centered at this point in your life.

  2. Isn't the question why they die at 30? by mykepredko · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So, they reach maturity at 6 months and stay at the same point for the rest of their lives. I would like to know what kills them at 30.

    Is it the telemores in their cells being used up and shutting down the animal or is there something else at play? Did they pass through a different evolutionary process which makes the established Gompertz-Makeham law invalid for them?

    Can anybody comment?

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    Mimetics Inc. Twitter