Lifespan human population has increased significantly in recent years. And you can still do more; Well, according to a recent study, we’re nowhere near the limit. At the moment, the record is held by a woman who has reached 122 years old. However, there are many other people who, like her, have reached over a century. and it’s in those centenarians in which scientists have targeted, looking for ways to increase longevity population. They look for their tricks and try to find a way to extend them to other people. Now, for example, it has been discovered that one of the keys to its longevity lies in the immune system.
It really makes sense. It not only protects us from infections. It is also responsible, for example, for the destruction of those cells that lose control of their proliferation and may become tumor. Typically, as this immune system is exposed to infections, it becomes stronger to fight them if they come back. But this ability decreases with time in most mortals. Centenarians don’t have it, or at least don’t seem to, so these scientists, whose results were published in electronic biomedicineThey wanted to test it.
At the moment, we already know the trick of centenarians to live so many years. Now it remains only to find out if it can be done. copy so that the rest of the population can imitate its durability. It will probably be much more difficult. But that’s what science is for. At least try.
Centenarians trick
To conduct this study, its authors recruited seven centenarians registered in New England Centenary Study. Blood samples were taken from all of them to perform what is known as single cell sequencing in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC). That is, from the blood that was extracted, some circulating immune cells and subjected to sequencing of their genetic material.
Once this was done, the results were compared against two sets of data from single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) publicly available. It should be said that the material that makes up the genome of human cells is mainly DNA, but this DNA is transcribed into RNA before being translated into proteins that are responsible for materializing those instructions encoded in DNA.
This transcription is not continuous. That is, in each cell and in each case, only the necessary genes are transcribed. This is what is known as expression genes. That’s where these scientists wanted to look for differences. Their intention was to see differences from the transcription patterns of the general population and centenarians. They suspected it might give them insight into how they achieve such longevity. So it was.
One of the keys to longevity
With the help of a number computational methods, these scientists were able to combine both sets of data and find differences. Thus, they observed that there are cell type-specific changes in composition and transcription that are unique to centenarians and reflect normal immune response.
Basically, it seems that, unlike other older people, centenarians have better trained immune systems. They have a long history infection controlbut the ability to fight them again does not deteriorate with age, quite the contrary.
For this reason, they are very prepared for situations that usually lead to decline in health associated with aging. This guarantees them a longer life span, much healthier.
According to the authors of the study, this could become a model for finding ways to allow us all to live more healthy and productive years. That woman, who was 122 years old, rode a bicycle until she was 100 years old and practiced fencing until she was 80 years old. It is clear that centenarians are made of a different material. Now we know one of the materials it consists of.
Source: Hiper Textual
