Environment

The Greenland shark is a particularly unique animal because it can live up to 500 years. This mystical creature lives in the depths of the cold waters of the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans and even stays in those cold waters year-round, setting it apart from other shark species.

No vertebrate on our globe ages as well as the Greenland shark, and scientists are finally beginning to understand why. By the way, this shark also grows extremely slowly, only 1 centimeter per year. But don't underestimate them: they can grow up to six meters long. And these animals also move slowly. According to scientists, their slow metabolism is part of what allows them to reach such a high age. 

How do these animals get so old?
An international team of scientists has now succeeded for the first time in mapping the *genome of the Greenland shark, explaining how the animals can get so old. First, that genome turns out to be extraordinarily long, twice as long as that of humans. And that entails an unseen skill. It would potentially allow the animals to repair defective genes in their DNA. In addition, 70 percent of the genes in the genome are also so-called “jumping genes”, which can move within the DNA sequence. For most animal species, such jumping genes are a danger that can trigger mutations and thus diseases such as cancer, but in the Greenland shark, the effect of those jumping genes could not only be nullified, but even reversed. So argues Arne Sahm, lead author of the study and bioinformatician at Ruhr University in Bochum, Germany. This would make the animals just less susceptible to “diseases of old age” and cancer, thus giving them a free pass to a sticky old age. 

(*genome= the complete genetic makeup of an organism)

Further research should now reveal the extent to which we can apply these revolutionary discoveries to human aging and who knows, maybe one day use them to our advantage.

(SR for Tagtik/Source: CNN - Science today - Nieuwsblad/Illustration picture: Image by Bernd Hildebrandt from Pixabay)