Martha Careful
a month ago
I thought this was interesting, MC (Sorry, I goofed up the Size and cant seem to fix it)
The New York Times Reported

This Shark Lives 400 Years. Its DNA May Explain Why.
Scientists have mapped the genome of the Greenland shark, which could offer clues to the animal’s extreme longevity.

 image.png You have insufficient rights to see the content.
An undersea view looking up at the surface, possibly covered in part by ice, of a Greenland shark swimming into the darkness.

In a new study, researchers identified a network of 81 genes that were found only in Greenland sharks and are known to play a role in DNA repair.Credit...WaterFrame/Alamy

By Jonathan Moens
Sept. 22, 2024, 5:01 a.m. ET
The Greenland shark is not exactly charismatic. Its hulking frame is covered by sandpaper skin. Its fins, stunted, sit awkwardly along its sides. And its eyes, perpetually cloudy, are often host to wormlike parasites that dangle as the shark slowly roams the depths of the North Atlantic and Arctic oceans.

But looks aside, the species has a surprising capacity: It can live for as long as about 400 years. Now, an international team of scientists from Europe and the United States has mapped the genome of the Greenland shark, offering scientists an opportunity to glean the secret to the shark’s outstanding longevity.

“Any research into the mechanisms of how this animal is able to live for such a long time will at some point need the genome sequence,” said Steve Hoffmann, a computational biologist at the Leibniz Institute on Aging and the Friedrich Schiller University Jena, in Germany, who led the research.

The findings, published as a preprint in bioRxiv, provide a comprehensive assembly of the shark’s genetic makeup. It also provides initial insights into the specific genes and biological mechanisms, including a network of duplicated genes involved in DNA repair, that may be responsible for the shark’s exceptional life span.

The scientists found that Greenland sharks possessed very large genomes: about 6.5 billion DNA “base pairs,” or building blocks — about twice as many as in humans, and the biggest genome of any other shark sequenced to date.
“We wouldn’t have guessed that it’s so large,” said Arne Sahm, a bioinformatician also at the Leibniz Institute on Aging and Ruhr University Bochum, who was the lead author on the study.

Surprisingly, more than two-thirds of the genome was composed of repeated genes known as transposable elements, or jumping genes. These genes insert themselves in others and self-replicate through a copy-and-paste mechanism. In doing so, they often disrupt the normal functioning of genes and may cause mutations, deletions or duplications, which can lead to the development of diseases or developmental issues in the organism.

“These are parasites, genomic parasites,” said Mr. Hoffmann. “They have a pretty bad reputation.”
The findings led the researchers to wonder how sharks could live so long if they carried such a high number of these harmful genes. They proposed that the Greenland shark might have evolved a unique way to hijack the machinery of these jumping genes to duplicate genes involved in DNA repair.

“These are animals that live longer than human beings, and they do this in the wild, without medicines or hospitals or health care,” said João Pedro de Magalhães, a molecular biogerontologist at the University of Birmingham in England, who was not involved in the study.

Studying the sharks, he added, may help scientists one day “develop cancer therapies or prevention measures, or a greater fundamental understanding of cancer that will lead to clinical benefits” in humans.

The shark’s remarkable longevity first came to light in 2016, when a landmark study published in Science used radiocarbon dating methods and modeling techniques to estimate the ages of 28 Greenland sharks. The researchers found that the oldest sharks could live for about 400 years and reached sexual maturity around age 150.

Flabbergasted, scientists from around the world have since been studying Greenland sharks to better understand how the species can live so long. Some are looking at its heart; others are homing in on its metabolism, and many are monitoring its behavior and ecology.

The pinnacle has been to unravel the Greenland shark’s genome. In the past five years, at least three teams have been racing to produce a full genome of the shark.

Hoffmann and his collaborators were the first to publish the shark’s genome, which covers around 92 percent of its entire DNA.

“We knew nothing before about its genome, and now we have a complete genome sequence,” said Steven Austad, a biologist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, who was not involved in the study. “I think that’s great.”
Reaching this stage took extensive fieldwork, including several expeditions off the coasts of Greenland, where members of the team caught Greenland sharks, euthanized them and took tissue samples from their spinal cords.
Image

Those tissue samples were then stored at low temperatures and sent to the Leibniz Institute, where the DNA was extracted, sequenced and compared with that of other sharks. In the end, the team sequenced the DNA from brain tissue from one shark.

A key finding identified a network of 81 genes that were found only in Greenland sharks and that played a role in DNA repair.

The researchers hypothesized that regular DNA repair genes had evolved to exploit the machinery of jumping genes in order to copy and paste more of themselves. That process may have helped them to both counteract the accumulated damage caused by jumping genes and improve the shark’s DNA repair abilities.

At the center of this network was a well-known gene, called TP53, that has been implicated in DNA repair and tumor suppression. A study published in 2016 showed that elephants carried 20 copies of this gene, and scientists believe that the gene may account for the animal’s strong resistance to cancer. The gene was also found to be structurally altered in Greenland sharks, although the team is still assessing whether this change would enhance the shark’s longevity.

The shark results are interesting, Dr. Austad said, but he cautioned that duplications don’t always reveal much. “Lots of genes get duplicated and don’t have any particular consequence,” he said.

He added that researchers would need to understand how these findings apply to live cells of different types, an
effort that could entail culturing Greenland shark cells, converting them into stem cells and differentiating them into, say, heart or brain cells.


“Then you could tinker — then you could manipulate the genome,” Dr. Austad said.

Mr. Sahm said his team hoped to conduct genome sequences of species that are shorter-lived but evolutionarily very
similar to Greenland sharks, like the Pacific sleeper shark. That also might shed light on what enables Greenland sharks to live so long.

Whichever direction the research takes, Dr. Austad said, it’s an exciting time for Greenland shark research. “Now is where the fun begins,” he said. “Now that we have the genome, it’s a question of developing hypotheses and then testing them.”


Go Packers!!!!
Zero2Cool
a month ago
They should check my DNA. I'm gonna live forever!
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beast (11h) : That's what I told the Police officer about my speed when he pulled me over
packerfanoutwest (17h) : NFL told Bears that Packers’ blocked field goal was legal
packerfanoutwest (22-Nov) : 49ers are underdogs at Packers, ending streak of 36 straight games as favorites
Zero2Cool (22-Nov) : 49ers might be down their QB, DL, TE and LT?
packerfanoutwest (22-Nov) : Jaire Alexander says he has a torn PCL
Zero2Cool (20-Nov) : Even with the context it's ... what?
Mucky Tundra (20-Nov) : Matt LaFleur without context: “I don’t wanna pat you on the butt and you poop in my hand.”
beast (20-Nov) : We brought in a former Packers OL coach to help evaluate OL as a scout
beast (20-Nov) : Jets have been pretty good at picking DL
Zero2Cool (20-Nov) : He landed good players thanks to high draft slot. He isn't good.
Zero2Cool (20-Nov) : He can shove his knowledge up his ass. He knows nothing.
beast (20-Nov) : More knowledge, just like bring in the Jets head coach
Zero2Cool (19-Nov) : What? Why? Huh?
beast (19-Nov) : I wonder if the Packers might to try to bring Douglas in through Milt Hendrickson/Ravens connections
Zero2Cool (19-Nov) : The Jets fired Joe Douglas, per sources
packerfanoutwest (19-Nov) : Jets are a mess......
Zero2Cool (19-Nov) : Pretty sure Jets fired their scouting staff and just pluck former Packers.
Zero2Cool (19-Nov) : Jets sign Anders Carlson to their 53.
Zero2Cool (19-Nov) : When you cycle the weeks, the total over remains for season. But you get your W/L for that selected week. Confusing.
packerfanoutwest (19-Nov) : the total and percentage are the same as the previous weeks
packerfanoutwest (19-Nov) : the total and percentage are the same as the previous weeks
packerfanoutwest (19-Nov) : the totals are accurate..nrvrtmind
Zero2Cool (19-Nov) : I don't follow what you are saying. The totals are not the same as last week.
packerfanoutwest (19-Nov) : ok so then wht are the totals the same as last week?
Zero2Cool (19-Nov) : NFL Pick'em is auto updated when NFL Scores tab is clicked
Martha Careful (19-Nov) : The offense was OK. Let's not forget the Bear defense is very very good.
packerfanoutwest (19-Nov) : Who updates the leaderboard on NFLPickem?
beast (19-Nov) : Has the Packers offense been worse since the former Jets coach joined the Packers?
Zero2Cool (19-Nov) : Offense gets his ass in gear, this could be good.
Zero2Cool (19-Nov) : Backup QB helped with three wins. Special Teams contributed to three wins.
bboystyle (18-Nov) : Lions played outside thats why. They scored 16 and 17 in the only 2 outside games this year
Zero2Cool (18-Nov) : The rest of the NFL is catching up to Packers ... kicking is an issue throughout league
packerfanoutwest (18-Nov) : Packers DL Kenny Clark: We knew 'we were going to block' Bears' game-winning field goal attempt
Zero2Cool (18-Nov) : Lions seem to be throttling everyone, but only (only) got 24 lol maybe the rain is why
Zero2Cool (18-Nov) : Packers vs Lions game doesn't seem so bad.
beast (18-Nov) : Dennis Green "They are what we thought they were, and we let them off the hook!"
Martha Careful (17-Nov) : comment of the day Z2Cool "Bears better than we want to admit. Packers worse than we think. It's facts."
Mucky Tundra (17-Nov) : my worst case scenario: Bears fix their oline and get a coach like Johnson from the Lions and his scheme
Zero2Cool (17-Nov) : Bears get OL fixed amd we might have a problem
buckeyepackfan (17-Nov) : Pretty sure they already have scouting reports on guys who aren't even starting for their college team. The future is now for me.
buckeyepackfan (17-Nov) : I tend to let Gute and Co. Worry about the future.
beast (17-Nov) : That's great news and Packers need to keep upgrading their OL, DL and DBs this off-season, so missing one guy doesn't kill them
beast (17-Nov) : That's great news and Packers need to keep upgrading their OL, DL and DBs this off-season, so missing one guy doesn't kill them
buckeyepackfan (17-Nov) : Jaire and Evans Williams are both ACTIVE! Good news.
Martha Careful (17-Nov) : The badgers really need to change the whole offensive scheme. No draws no screens plus the quarterback is marginal
Cheesey (17-Nov) : If the Badgers had a decent QB, they would have won. The guy can't hit a wide open receiver
Martha Careful (17-Nov) : chop block
Martha Careful (17-Nov) : there was a very questionable job Block call that upon viewing replay was very borderline
beast (17-Nov) : How so? (I didn't watch)
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