Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Why Some Animals Live Longer than Others
Scientists from the University of Liverpool recently published an article in Science Daily that discussed a newly discovered a method to detect the proteins associated with longevity. The scientists further looked in to the genome of 30 mammalian species to look for specific proteins that code for longevity. They found a certain protein responsible for repairing damaged DNA. When they took a closer look at the protein they found it evolves and mutates in a non-random way, in animals species that live longer.The scientists concluded that certain proteins are selected by evolution to change in longer living mammals, such as humans and elephants.
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The fact that DNA can repair itself is pretty cool. This information can maybe even help discover a way for people and animals to live longer than they should. We could possibly alter our genes to make ourselves live longer. It is also interesting how genes change over our life time.
ReplyDeleteOne of the articles I read found that you can isolate the relationship between amount of sleep and longevity. This means that techinically sleep is not necessarily significant in the length of your life. Thus, if we can find some way to eliminate the need for sleep and find a way to express this mutating protein more frequently, we could possibly live much longer, and stay awake and be much more productive! (This would be awesome, especially during finals week.)
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