…with hyperlong telomeres.
“These unprecedented results show that longer than normal telomeres in a given species are not harmful but quite the contrary: they have beneficial effects, such as increased longevity, delayed metabolic age and less cancer,” concludes the team.
The telomere theory has been around for decades, but we seem to be getting closer to actual implementation.
It wasn’t clear to me, is this something that only helps “new” mice? Or can it be applied retroactively? My reason for asking should be obvious to all.
Mice born before 1976 will not be helped.
Would you old boomers just die already. You are preventing the perfect society from forming.
I’m doing my best, but accidents don’t just happen, you know!
This doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. Longer telomere chains should mean more cancer.
However, cancer doesn’t really matter if your immune system is able to kill it. And many cancers activate the telomerase gene which adds new telomeres to their DNA.
The interesting part is that they apparently saw a reduction in cancers. Presumably telomeres must be beneficial in reducing cancers if evolution developed the mechanism to do so, but it could end up preventing cancers in youth while creating more problems in old age as the telomeres run out and the mechanism starts killing off what would otherwise be healthy cells, or turning them into cancerous cells.