Researchers here take a very broad tour of the established literature on the comparative biology of aging in long lived species of all sorts, picking from those that can live more than 250 years, whether plant or animal, and comparing reported differences in biochemistry both between species and between individuals of the same species. It seems just as interesting to ask which mechanisms are important in individual variation in pace of aging in a long-lived species as to ask why the species is long-lived in the first place. The usual challenges exist, in that one can identify differences in biochemistry that seem reasonably likely to contribute to differences in longevity, but establishing the relative importance of each contribution is near impossible without some form of intervention that sabotages or enhances one mechanism in isolation of all of the others.
Certain molecular processes shape the lifespan of each species and each individual. Deciphering these processes, which underlie the diversity in lifespan across and within species can help us better understand how they evolved and why. Such knowledge may inform the design of effective strategies towards increasing human and other species' healthspan and lifespan. Here, we consider 101 species that live past 250 years, including the longest-living beings on Earth. Among these species, 90 are plants and only 11 are animals. Some barely reach an age of 250 years, while others live for up to 80,000 years. Few, such as the freshwater planarian and the Turritopsis dohrnii jellyfish, are considered potentially immortal. None of these species are mammals; indeed, no known mammal lives for over 250 years.
We surveyed the genetic, transcriptional, proteomic, metabolomic, regeneration-, stress-, and cancer-related components of intraspecific and interspecific lifespan variation, across these species. We examined whether the mechanisms regulating intraspecific lifespan variation across these species are the same or different from mechanisms regulating interspecific lifespan variation. We identified several similarities: both types of variation include mechanisms related to DNA maintenance, stemness, and stress management. Such mechanisms are also typical of early developmental stages and germ cells. Nonetheless, caution should be exercised when attempting to draw robust conclusions based on available data, given the lack of in-depth molecular studies on the healthspan and lifespan across thousands of individuals and species, the methodological variation across published studies, and our partial understanding of the interplay between physiology and the environment across species.
Link: https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.206419
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