Telomeres are structures made of clumps and strands of leftover DNA coding junk. They're found on the ends of chromosomes (the pink patches on the picture:)
No one paid any attention to them for a long time, but study now reveals that they're protective "bumpers" on the end of the chromosome - they keep damage from occurring, sort of like the little plastic tips keep shoelaces from unraveling.
BONUS Non-Sequitur! Those little plastic tips are called "Aglets," for those of you not up on your shoe nomenclature. Now back to the story.
Further, it turns out that the longer the telomeres, the longer it takes for that chromosome to wear out. Short version: Their length is more or less related to lifespan.
So, they did a study and found out that kids who are born to older men live longer. And kids born to older men who were born to older men live even longer than that. And they tracked down why that might be.
Turns out that the older a man gets, the longer the telomere strings are in his baby batter. In fact, it turns out that there's a direct relationship between the length of the sperm telomeres and the telomeres contained in his general system - the sperm telomeres get longer as his general system telomeres get shorter.
In summary, "Old Sperm Is The Best Sperm," at least if you're interested in the lifespan of the sprogs. I'm thinking about having a t-shirt printed up.
I explained all this to The Beneficiary, and she said the extra lifespan was probably balanced out by increasing defects and problems in aging eggs in old guys' partners. I asked her where she'd heard me say anything about involving OLDER eggs. Zowie Bleedin' Hay Suse! NOW what did I say?
I swear, I will never understand women.
In Our Next Episode: I suspect I'll be taking a lot of heat for this one, and I'll respond when I get back from the emergency call I just got from a poor soul with short telomeres. It's a solemn duty to help when I'm called on, y'know? Sorta like being Batman. A greying, pudgy Batman.
Is "live longer" supposed to mean "has a better, healthier, more fulfilling quality of life?"
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure length of life and improved quality of life aren't very strongly related.
Interesting. My kids' dad is a tad "older," I guess. So that's nice. Serenebabe's comment is something i think about a lot though... my dad is all screwed up at 82, but at least has some quality of life. My ex FIL though has a life no one would want.
ReplyDeleteWhen Dad was born, Granddad was 33, and when Granddad was born, Great-Granddad was 54, but Dad and Granddad lived almost exactly the same number of years.
ReplyDeleteI have no data on the relative ages of the egg donors.
So? Yeah. Well.
"Is "live longer" supposed to mean "has a better, healthier, more fulfilling quality of life?""
ReplyDeleteNope. Just means "longer." For "better, healthier, more fulfilling" see various articles on brand new research they're doing on nicotinamide riboside (NR) (a relative of vitamin B3/Niacin,) in which mice getting high doses of same eat without gaining weight, and have overall better health and energy utilization. See this one for example: Science Daily
That NR study is very cool. Too bad though that they still use mice to experiment on. They should do everything in computer models so that while nothing will ever really be accomplished, there'll also be no reason to breed mice that will then be subject to tests that they obviously wouldn't be subjected to if they didn't exist in the first place. It's all about basic morality, you know, aminals having the same rights as humans and so on.
ReplyDeleteSo, if we're talking about increasing the odds of having a good quality of life, the pokey things that have the nubby ends that the old guys have (more than the younger guys do) don't really have much relevance, huh.
ReplyDelete