Scott Kelly's DNA shows unexpected telomere lengthening after year in space
nature.com
nature.com
I talked to the director of this massive study and he said there was no correlation with cognitive functioning and telomere length [1] and the entire thing may be a bit overrated. Interestingly enough though, he said there there was a strong correlation with DNA methylation[2] with increased methylation associated with worse cognitive aging.
Very interestingly, DNA methylation decreased for Scott after his time in space...
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21194798 [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/projects/gap/cgi-bin/study.cgi?...
Cancer is the runway division of cells. Preventing cell division when the telomeres are too short ensures there is a finite number of times a cell can divide, meaning there is a finite number of times a cancer cell can divide. This helps prevent cancer from dividing indefinitely. Especially in older folks, we see how terrible cancer can be when those cells mutate and can regenerate telomere length, giving themselves unlimited division.
It's the physical trade-off we have with lengthening or preserving telomere length. They give all of our cells more divisions, good and bad. Since cancer is an exercise in the law of large numbers (how many random mutations will it take for it to hit a critical point in your DNA?), Longer lifespans with longer telomeres will inevitable also mean more aggressive cancers.
"Once Scott returned to the ground, the length of his telomeres returned to his pre-flight levels relatively quickly. "
from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_pair :
> one bp corresponds to approximately 3.4 Å (340 pm) of length along the strand
so physical length and number of repeats of the sequence are the same, by some factor.
Maybe this is not the perfect analogy, but the character 'a' and the character 'A' might have different heights, but they still represent the same letter of the alphabet.
Lowering calorie intake is one of the few well known ways that lifespan can be increased. Will have to see if there's any research correlating low calorie diets and telomere length.
In the NASA article they say that it could be attributed to the lower caloric intake and increased exercise
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/how-stressful-will-a-trip-to-ma...
So these people were in a thin metal cube, exposed to abnormal levels of ionizing radiation, ... and after that there was telomere lengthening ? I always heard that astronauts, given the groups they're selected from, have suspiciously short lifespans. Still somewhat above average, but these guys got selected from the creme de la creme. Half of them should live to 120, and that is definitely not happening. I've never seen a good study actually comparing it though.
http://dailycaller.com/2016/02/06/apollo-14-astronaut-dies-o...
According to several doctor friends of mine, balance is the best way to go for a long life. Being too thin will kill you, because once you're 65 or 70 or so you will lose the ability to quickly gain weight. A significant number of people dying from "natural causes" die as follows : they get infected with something stupid, like a flu virus. Or they break a hip or something. Either way, they get really under the weather. Result: they lose weight, a lot of weight, rapidly. If your weight falls under about 35 kg, odds of survival drop dramatically, and they die from "complications" (in practice: secondary infections resulting in metabolic exhaustion: your body simply cannot maintain the minimum energy level to keep you alive. On the plus side: very peaceful way to go, and likely quite comfortable too). Keep in mind it will take a year to work your way back from 40kg to 50kg at such an age, so the higher you go the more likely you'll drop back down due to another incident before recovering.
And of course, exercise only helps up to a normal level. If you spend 2 hours every day running, that is definitely in the "shortens lifespan" area. 10 minutes, probably very good for you. And of course, the obvious : exercise increases the odds of accidents happening. Accidents, even stupid ones, can kill.
This badly needs a source.
This article from 2013 [1] says the opposite, that shorter telomeres are associated with cancer:
In recent years, shorter telomeres have become associated with a broad range of aging-related diseases, including many forms of cancer, stroke, vascular dementia, cardiovascular disease, obesity, osteoporosis and diabetes.
And another [2]:
"Telomere shortening is common in cancer, but the degree of shortening varies from one cancer cell to another within each patient, and this variability may give us a better idea of how prostate cancers behave."
[1]: https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2013/09/108886/lifestyle-changes-m...
[2]: http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/media/releases/in_prosta...
"Cancer" is an unbelievably broad term. Generally speaking, expression of telomerase and maintenance of telomeres is seen in (many) cancers. The background behind this is that as telomeres shorten with each cell replication, they get to a point where they are too short, and the cell stops dividing. Cancer occurs when cells that are not supposed to divide keep dividing.
From what I understand, this is just the "moderation is good, extremes are bad" meme. Similar things are recommended regarding diet composition etc. I usually read it as "we don't really know, so just do what everyone does".
>"And of course, exercise only helps up to a normal level."
What's normal? You think people only spent 10 minutes a day running, in the past?
1 hour is 10 km at a leisurely pace. If I go for a run in the morning, and in the evening, I'm very confident that I'll have better chances to live longer than someone who runs less than 2 km a day. Running ultramarathons will shorten your life, maybe. But not a jog or two.
---editing to add details after googling around a bit---
Intensity of physical exercise is measured in metabolic equivalents (MET)[1]. There is also a table with MET values for common activities.
I looked at some studies, but most are not interesting. One[2] defines "vigorous PA" like this:
Assessments of vigorous physical activity were based on a single set of intensity categories applied at all three time points; these were: 1) walking, 2) alternately walking and jogging, 3) jogging (light running), and 4) running. Vigorous activity was defined as levels 2, 3, or 4 (all more intensive than normal walking), performed at least 3–5 times/month in 1975 and 1981, or at least for 30 min each week in 1990.
(so - not useful)
However, I found another one[3], which has this to say:
Several of us have recently analyzed 55,000 individuals (13,000 runners) from the ACLS database during nearly 15-year follow-up to assess the impact of running on CVD and allcause mortality.11 Compared with nonrunners, runners had a reduction in all-cause and CVD mortality of 30% and 45%, respectively, with an average increase in survival of 3.0 and 4.1 years for all-cause and CVD-related survival, respectively, after adjusting for lifestyle factors (eg, smoking and obesity) and medical conditions (eg, HTN and T2DM). Persistent runners appeared to receive the full benefit from mortality reduction, whereas those who started running but stopped or those who were not running at baseline but subsequently started running appeared to receive nearly half of the benefit received from CVD and all-cause mortality reduction. These results are impressive, though perhaps not surprising when considered in the context of the data outlined in previous sections, showing myriad health benefits of running.
However, when assessing doses of running, somewhat surprising results were found. Runners generally had considerably higher levels of CRF than did nonrunners, and moreover, CRF levels in runners progressively increased with increasing doses of running (Figure 2).11 Most evidence indicates better survival with estimated MET levels greater than 10,23-25 although some evidence indicates progressively better survival with even higher CRF levels.45 When 13,000 runners were divided into quintiles of running doses (miles per week, times per week, minutes per week, and speed), no significant differences in the benefits were noted for any of the running groups.Infact,runnersinquintile1(eg,<6 miles/wk, 1-2 times/wk, <51 min/wk, <6 mph) received the full benefits from running with regard to reduction in CVD and all-cause mortality (Figure 3).11 These results suggest that maximal benefits of running occur at quite modest jogging doses and that runners in quintile 1 have almost similar benefits of running compared with those in quintile 2 to quintile 4 and have a slight, nonstatistically significant trend toward greater benefitcomparedwith those in quintile 5. However, in contrast to the results of the Copenhagen City Heart Study,14 our results, from a larger sample with much better statistical power, indicated that runners with high doses of running in quintile 5 still had significantly better CVD and all-cause survival compared with nonrunners.11 However, these higher doses of running were not necessary to achieve maximal reduction in CVD and allcause mortality.11-14
1 - http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/clc.4960130809/pd...
2 - http://www.nature.com/articles/srep18259
3 - http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0025619615...
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elysium_(film)
That said, being exposed to a lot of high-energy ionizing radiation and lengthening one's teleomeres doesn't sound like a good combination...
Arthur C. Clarke's short story "The Secret" is a bit more directly relevant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_(short_story)
You might find these papers on Interstellar finance interesting:
Bailey found Scott’s telomeres on the ends of chromosomes in his
white blood cells increased in length while in space.
This could be linked to increased exercise and reduced caloric
intake during the mission.
I wonder does that level of radition actually fall into hormetic domain.
[1] http://ideonexus.com/2009/02/17/how-much-does-time-dilate-fo...
[2] https://spaceflight.nasa.gov/station/crew/exp7/luletters/lu_...
Quoting wikipedia:
> During chromosome replication, the enzymes that duplicate DNA cannot continue their duplication all the way to the end of a chromosome, so in each duplication the end of the chromosome is shortened [...] The telomeres are disposable buffers at the ends of chromosomes which are truncated during cell division; their presence protects the genes before them on the chromosome from being truncated instead.
> Telomere shortening is associated with aging, mortality and aging-related diseases. In 2003, Richard Cawthon discovered that those with longer telomeres lead longer lives than those with short telomeres. However, it is not known whether short telomeres are just a sign of cellular age or actually contribute to the aging process.
It causes your body to (very) slowly lose the ability to grow new cells. Also cells with shorter telomeres "senescence", which is sort of like aging : they become slower, and more brittle.
Amongst the advantages this has is that it protects against cells that increase their metabolism too high and against cells that rapidly divide (by having them senescence and die). The obvious disadvantage: it eventually kills you.
It seems likely, given that this mechanism is "deliberate" and definitely under the control of your DNA, that you live longer and more successfully with aging than without.
Not necessarily "you" but perhaps the species as a whole. Without the aging and inevitable death our ancestors may have evolved slower.
The human body has a mechanism to reset telomere length during reproduction; i.e., babies are born with "full length" telomeres.
Can anyone shed light on why this mechanism is so hard to trigger in an adult? What are the technical difficulties in artifically lengthening telomeres?
Purely speculating, death to "old age" is rare in nature so the process merely has to be "good enough" for our genes to compete rather than perfect enough for immortality.
Another really interesting result was in DNA methylation, a gene activity regulation process [1].
Scott's DNA methylation decreased during flight while his Earthbound twin's methylation increased during that time. After Scott's return to Earth, DNA methylation in both twins returned to baseline level. The last result puzzles me.
Clearly, as you age, telomeres would shrink to nothingness. However, there is a mechanism to add more DNA to telomeres... which seems to be off for most cells. So it's thought that shortening telomeres is a cause of cellular aging, and lengthening them is thought to be able to halt or reverse cellular aging and hence aging in general.
The actual biology experiments generally seem to suggest more "we don't really know what's going on here."
In short, what's being said is "going to space seems to show an improvement in a metric that we really, really hope is correlated with increased longevity."
As the HN policy around reposts is somewhat subjective "If a story has had significant attention in the last year or so, we kill reposts as duplicates. If not, a small number of reposts is ok," I'd contend that marking as dupe in this case wasn't the right move. While the post from yesterday did get significant attention, that post moved past the front page, and today's repost resulted in meaningful and engaging further discussion. Unfortunately now that discussion is most probably dead, as is the discussion on yesterday's post, where new comment activity has stalled.