Parrots' keep talking their ways into longer lives

       

         Morgan Wirthlin, a geneticist at the University of Carnegie Mellon, along with her colleagues from other institutes are the first to preform a comparative study on parrot genomes. The study includes over 20 different species of aves while focusing on four species of parrots and dives into their discovery of a section of genes that are linked with the bird's incredible life and cognitive longevity. As you know from this course, the longevity of ones life is correlated to the life of the chromosome's telomeres. As a cell replicates an overhang occurs at the end of the chromosome (telomere) therefore causing the chromosome to shorten by approximately 100bps everytime it replicates. Telomerase is an enzyme that is responsible for the repair of the telomeres so that this reduction in base pairs is fixed. However telomerase is barely active in somatic cells therefore they tend to be reduced which then leads to aging.

          Wirthlin mentions that parrots are known to live up to 90 years in captivity which is relative to hundreds of years for a human life span! Through our knowledge of how lifespan is limited one can only infer that parrots have increased levels of telomere repair/protection whether its through telomerase or another enzyme/process. Through the study a pivotal discovery was made. In the 344 genes that were looked at from high longevity birds, 6% have been previously noted to improve longevity of model organisms in a controlled experiment. However the other 94% of those genes have never been connected to improve the lifespan of any other organism from the scientific community's knowledge. TERT (telomerase reverse transcriptase) is part of the whole telomerase compound that protects against cell cenescence, which is the cell ceasing to divide. The study showed that TERT had two positive sites in which this was present in high longevity birds compared to zero in humans. This change in TERT activity could be a plausible explanation in the enhancement of the birds lifespan. One drawback was that TERT could have risks of causing increased cell proliferation and tumor formation therefore doing more harm than good. But the parrots also were found to have genes BUB1B, BUB3, KIF4A, KIF1BP, and CCNE1 which link with controlling cell proliferation and tumor formation. The combination of their telomerase activity and cell-cycle regulation could be revolutionary for our knowledge in preventing or slowing down the rate of cancer in mammalian species. This could also be the first steps in identifying what could slow down the destruction of telomeres or even prevent it all together. 

LINKS:
News report from Science Daily 
Journal article from Current Biology

Can Fish Help Us Understand the Mystery of Aging

In the article, “In Short-Lived Fish, Secrets to Aging”, that was published in The New York Times researchers were looking into how the turquoise killifish could help understand the aging process and how to potentially find a way to increase life spans. The turquoise killifish have the shortest life span of any vertebrates, they grow to maturity in 40 days and mate and lay eggs and by the time they do that the pond dries up and the fish are dead. Even when they keep them in aquariums they still died within a couple of months. They do not have premature deaths, but just have compressed life spans. They are ideal for this experiment because they have short life spans and they are very similar to humans in the aging process. They have tested in mice and they found that SRT1720 extended the mice lives, on average, by 8.8%. But the mice still live too long, which slows down the research process, so they tiny nematodes, which were not a perfect organism because they did not have a skeleton.

Anne Brunet’s graduate student suggested she use turquoise killifish and that is how it all started. They found out that the fish loses muscle mass while aging, stop producing eggs, have a weaken immune system and even have memory problems. They did an entire genome sequence and located the genes that are known for aging processes. They used a technique called Crispr, which could replace DNA with a different one. With that technique they altered the gene TERT that protects telomeres. They think that as telomeres get shorter the aging processes increases and had a link to aging. After the TERT alteration they makes became infertile and females less eggs, atrophied, and had less blood cells, but never died any sooner than their expected life span. They plan on continuing the research in order to find out potential anti-aging treatments for the fish and then hopefully be able to convert it for humans.

This is not normally an article I would attract to, but I was surprisingly very interesting in this topic. If they could find a treatment to increase life span it can be very beneficial for the whole human race. Although they are not there yet, if they keep working, it has a lot of potential. Another thing that I like about the article was that it mentioned that the graduate student was the one to mention the turquoise killifish, although they did say their name, just the recognition that they had suggested it was nice. The world is very into living longer and looking younger, so this could potentially be the answer to that, but we will have to wait and see.

Women of African at Greater Risk for Breast Cancer

Researchers have a identified the location of a genetic risk fact for a special type of breast cancer. This type of breast cancer, known as estrogen receptor-negative breast cancer, is a form of cancer that does not properly express the estrogen receptor and therefore it does not respond well to drug treatments. This type of cancer is especially prevalent in women of African descent. Studies have shown them to be more susceptive to progesterone receptor-negative and human epidermal growth factor-negative breast cancer, as well as estrogen receptor-negative strain. Researchers have linked this phenomenon to the presence of an allele near the TERT gene on chromosome 5, strongly correlating to an increased risk for estrogen receptor-negative breast cancer. This genetic variant then in turn shows a greater link to the other two receptor-negative cancers. This region of the human genome have been previously researched for links to other types of cancer as well, such as ovarian and lung cancer. While studies are still be conducted as to how this allele actually works, researchers believe that once it is completely understood, it will give insight into other types of cancer as well.

http://www.healthcanal.com/cancers/22740-Genetic-Basis-for-Aggressive-Breast-Cancer-Women-African-Ancestry-Identified.html (Article Link)