As far as life expectancy is dependent on DNA
Health / / December 19, 2019
In 2013, Google co-founder Larry Page announced the opening of Calico (short for California Life Company), set up to solve the problem of death. Since then, the longevity of the laboratory is trying to find answers to fundamental biological questions about aging in hopes of one day conquer death. One of the first employees hired - known geneticist Cynthia Kenyon (Cynthia Kenyon). Twenty years ago, it has doubled the length of the laboratory worm lives by changing one letter in his DNA.
Soon, Kenyon took the work of a specialist in bioinformatics Ruby Graham (Graham Ruby). He did not want to delve into the genetics of worms or studying a colony of naked mole rats-lived. Ruby wanted to first understand how big the contribution genes make to all longevity.
Other researchers had already asked this question, but have come to conflicting results. To achieve clarity, it required much more data. Calico therefore appealed to the largest genealogical data base in the world - a non-profit organization Ancestry, specializing in consumer genetics.
In 2015, the company engaged in collaborative researchEstimates of the Heritability of Human Longevity Are Substantially Inflated due to Assortative Mating. They decided to investigate whether life expectancy is inherited. To do this, Ruby shoveled a lot of family trees, stored in the Ancestry. With a team of researchers, he analyzed the origin of more than 400 million people living in Europe and America since 1800.
Although longevity is usually a family trait, it was found that the DNA is much less effect on life expectancy than previously thought.
According to Ruby, the heritability of longevity is not more than 7%. Although previous estimates genes influence on the life expectancy ranged from 15 to 30%. What is so found Ruby, we had missed other scientists? He just noticed how often amorous homo sapiens challenge the old adage that opposites attract.
It turned out, in every generation, people are much more likely to choose a partner with a life expectancy similar to his. And it can not be attributed to a simple accident. Such a phenomenon is called assortativeness or nonrandom selection par. It is distributed not only on longevity, but also a whole set of genetic and socio-cultural characteristics. For example, people tend to choose partners with a similar economic status and formation.
Ruby for the first time thought that the genes - it's not all that drew the attention of not blood relatives, and relatives by marriage.
Based on the fundamental law of heredity - each gets half of the DNA from one parent and half from the second that repeated from generation to generation - the researchers looked at the relationship between two related persons and the duration of their life.
They analyzed the pair of "parent and child", "brother and sister", as well as various combinations with cousins. There was not noticed anything unusual. Strangeness began when Ruby drew attention to the family by marriage. It seems to be logical that you should not have the same genetic characteristics and their spouses brothers and sisters. But it turned out that people connected by family ties through marriage to a close relative, is almost as likely to live equally long as that blood relatives. "Although no one had ever elicited such an influence assortativeness, it is consistent with the structure of the human community", - says Ruby.
According to him, these results do not invalidate previous work to identify specific genes associated with aging and comorbidities. But to discover other such genes in the future will be much more difficult. To identify them, the researchers will need very large amounts of statistical data. But this is not a problem for Calico, which in addition to family trees and more gained access to anonymised information about DNA Ancestry million customers.
Now we can conclude that the people themselves have a greater impact on the duration of their lives than their genes.
Much more important is not the DNA, and other factors shared by family members: environment, culture, food, access to education and health care.
Perhaps, therefore, the chief researcher Ancestry Katherine Ball (Catherine Ball), and says the company has no plans in the near future to focus on longevity in, DNA testing products.
"It seems that healthy life expectancy is now more dependent on our own choice", - says Ball. According to statistical data can be tracked, in some aspects this figure is significantly decreased: during the first World War II in men and later in both sexes in the second half of the XX century, when smoking was common habit.
"Do not smoke and do not fight. Here are two of my council, "- she continues. So find time to exercise.
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