{"id":93516,"date":"2019-07-12T16:02:31","date_gmt":"2019-07-12T23:02:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/07\/telomere-shortening-rate-predicts-species-life-span"},"modified":"2019-07-12T16:02:31","modified_gmt":"2019-07-12T23:02:31","slug":"telomere-shortening-rate-predicts-species-life-span","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/07\/telomere-shortening-rate-predicts-species-life-span","title":{"rendered":"Telomere shortening rate predicts species life span"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/telomere-shortening-rate-predicts-species-life-span2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The exact causes of aging are still not understood, and it is unclear why some species live less than 1 d, while others can live more than 400 y. Research suggests that telomeres are related to the aging process, but a clear relationship between the life span of a species and initial telomere length has not been observed. Here, we measure the telomere lengths of a variety of different species. We find that, in fact, there is no strong correlation between the life span of a species and initial telomere length. However, we find a strong correlation between the telomere shortening rate and the life span of a species.<\/p>\n<p>Telomere shortening to a critical length can trigger aging and shorter life spans in mice and humans by a mechanism that involves induction of a persistent DNA damage response at chromosome ends and loss of cellular viability. However, whether telomere length is a universal determinant of species longevity is not known. To determine whether telomere shortening can be a single parameter to predict species longevities, here we measured in parallel the telomere length of a wide variety of species (birds and mammals) with very different life spans and body sizes, including mouse (<i>Mus musculus<\/i>), goat (<i>Capra hircus<\/i>), Audouin\u2019s gull (<i>Larus audouinii<\/i>), reindeer (<i>Rangifer tarandus<\/i>), griffon vulture (<i>Gyps fulvus<\/i>), bottlenose dolphin (<i>Tursiops truncatus<\/i>), American flamingo (<i>Phoenicopterus ruber<\/i>), and Sumatran elephant (<i>Elephas maximus sumatranus<\/i>). We found that the telomere shortening rate, but not the initial telomere length alone, is a powerful predictor of species life span.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The exact causes of aging are still not understood, and it is unclear why some species live less than 1 d, while others can live more than 400 y. Research suggests that telomeres are related to the aging process, but a clear relationship between the life span of a species and initial telomere length has [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":511,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,269],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-93516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-life-extension"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/511"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93516\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}