Zebra Finches and Their Telomeres

An article on ScienceNow says that a study reports that scientists have discovered a way to gauge how long Zebra Finches may live.  The study stated that the longer the telomeres the birds had the longer the birds with them lived. Telomeres are the set of very repetitive DNA sequences with the help of other proteins  link together chromosomes, preventing them from falling apart. Other studies about how Telemeres affect how long someone will live, have had varying results. Reseach has shown that very  short telomeres may be linked to your susceptibility to diseases. Biologist Pat Monaghan and her many colleagues from the University of Glasgow locate in the United Kingdom believe this study is the best evidence to prove how Telomeres effect length of life.

What the scientists did was measure the telomeres of the red blood cells of 99 individual Zebra Finches. Then they measured them again after 25 days. Once the 25th day mark was hit they would ever so often measure the telomeres until all of the birds died off. One of the main reasons Zebra Finches were selected for this experiment was because like humans their telomeres don't get restored at all as they age.  They found that after 25 days the telomere length had  a major connection to how long they were going to live.  Meaning that the longer a birds telomeres were at that point the longer the bird lived. The connection was still apparant after a year but as time went on the connection eventually disappeared.

They believe that the reason that telomere length hasn't been helpful in humans is because the ones with really short telomeres die way before they were given a chance to examine them. Thomas von Zgliniicki a cellular gerontologist who studies aging at New Castle University within the United Kingdom says that  the idea that they could use this same process wouldn't work at all since about half of the birds died before they reached the midpoint of an average lifespan. Humans on the other hand have only ten percent of the population that die at that point so the numbers wouldn't work.