Scientists figured out how to calculate the lifespan of animals

Observations on animal life from Madrid Zoo have helped Spanish geneticists prove that telomeres length (repeat sequence of DNA at chromosome ends) reflects the average life expectancy only of people, but of every resident on our planet.

Maria Blasco of the National Cancer Center of Madrid (Spain) said : "We have discovered a universal biological law that determines the number of years, months or days that a given organism can live. We can prove that telomere length creates the lifespan for all animals on Earth . "

"The telomere length creates a lifespan for all animals on Earth."

From a biological point of view, embryonic and embryonic stem cells are virtually immortal - they can live almost indefinitely in a full living environment and have an unlimited number of division. In contrast, the cells of an adult body, gradually lose the ability to divide after 40-50 cycles of division, enter the aging stage.

The first experiments with telomeres showed that their length accurately reflects the age of a person, as well as how long he will live. Stress, bad habits, chronic diseases and difficult living conditions affect their condition, accelerate telomere shortening, which may explain why average rich people live longer than lower classes. .

Blasco noted, these discoveries forced biologists and evolution to debate whether this dependence is characteristic of other Earth inhabitants and whether it is possible to calculate age. average life of all species by measuring telomeres length and their shortening speed.

Turns out, their initial telomere length and shortened speed reflect very accurately the speed at which their owners die. For example, elephants and ostriches live in 40-60 years, with telomeres quite short, their length decreases slowly as in humans.

Meanwhile, rats and bottlenose dolphins live for a relatively short time compared to other mammals, have relatively long telomeres, with a reduction in thousands of nucleotides per year.