7 ms·
Scott Kelly's DNA shows unexpected telomere lengthening after year in space
- wodencafe 10y agoScott and Mark are great. Interesting note: "Once Scott returned to the ground, the length of his telomeres returned to his pre-flight levels relatively quickly. "
- swsieber 10y agoSo if my intuition is applicable (which it's probably not)- it's longer because it stretches out, not because it's accumulating material? I assume that's not really possible though...
- daemonk 10y agoTelomere length is not measured by physical length. It is measured by the actual number of repeats of the sequence.
- philsnow 10y agowell, isn't the telomere sequence just some sequence of base pairs, and all base pairs are the same length ? from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_pair 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.
- daemonk 10y agoSure. But the question assumed that the physical length can be variable depending on the environment. Even if that was the case, measurement of telomeres by the sequence themselves will be independent of environmental 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.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- chadgeidel 10y agoThank you for asking this question I was too afraid to ask. And daemonk - thank you for answering without snark. I love this place!
- teabee89 10y agoThis would bring another reason for the billionaire in the 1997 movie Contact, to go to space to live just a little longer :P
- blacksmith_tb 10y agoA bit more like Elysium[1], I'd say... 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elysium_(film) 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...
- teraflop 10y agoIn Elysium, living in space wasn't directly connected to a longer lifespan. It just so happened that the elite segment of the population was able to afford both. Arthur C. Clarke's short story "The Secret" is a bit more directly relevant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_(short_story) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_(short_story)
- delecti 10y agoHe was dying of cancer, the last thing he needed was longer telomeres. :P
- Paul-ish 10y agoGo fast enough and you can live longer than everyone else in earth years. Watch those financial investments pay off.
- ars 10y ago> Watch those financial investments pay off. You might find these papers on Interstellar finance interesting: https://www.princeton.edu/~pkrugman/interstellar.pdf https://www.princeton.edu/~pkrugman/interstellar.pdf http://www.espenhaug.com/SpaceTimeFLong.pdf http://www.espenhaug.com/SpaceTimeFLong.pdf
- 10y ago
- didgeoridoo 10y agoSurprised the article didn't bring up radiation hormesis as a plausible explanation. Maybe I'm misunderstanding the observed effects?
- manarth 10y agoThe NASA article [1] gives a little more background, and offers another explanation: 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. [1] https://www.nasa.gov/feature/how-stressful-will-a-trip-to-mars-be-on-the-human-body-we-now-have-a-peek-into-what-the-nasa https://www.nasa.gov/feature/how-stressful-will-a-trip-to-ma...
- majkinetor 10y agoI am even surprised that somebody mentioned radiation hormesis here. GJ. I wonder does that level of radition actually fall into hormetic domain.
- ohitsdom 10y agoInteresting results. But were twins needed for this discovery? I would imagine the the telomere length change could have been discovered by pre-mission, in-mission, and post-mission sampling. I'm guessing this was discovered in this study because of the in-depth DNA sampling, not due to having a twin to compare to.
- JamesMcMinn 10y agoI'm not sure of the exact details in this case, but having a twin as a baseline will likely to useful in a number of ways. Things change over time - how much did Scott's telomere length change in comparison to before he went to space and in comparison to his brother?
- ceejayoz 10y agoMy understanding (https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2013/09/108886/lifestyle-changes-may-lengthen-telomeres-measure-cell-aging https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2013/09/108886/lifestyle-changes-m...) is that telomeres can lengthen due to diet, exercise, etc., so having a twin on earth with a similar diet and exercise regimen would be worthwhile to account for as many variables as possible.
- godelski 10y agoThe twins were used because they are doing a wide variety of genomic testing. One serves as a baseline. So twins will give a low variance between candidates.
- sneezeplease 10y agoLying increases telomere length, interesting indeed.
- devy 10y agoI have no idea what the significance of telomere is (googled it but really want a TL;DR version). Can someone explain this preliminary result in layman's terms?
- pizza 10y agoThis slide might be useful: https://image.slidesharecdn.com/telomerelength-a21stcenturybiomarkercopy-150915090850-lva1-app6891/95/telomere-length-a-21st-century-biomarker-4-638.jpg?cb=1442308214 https://image.slidesharecdn.com/telomerelength-a21stcenturyb...
- dudus 10y agoIt means he didn't age as much.
- jeron 10y agoon top of the time disparity caused by space travel, so not only did he not experience as much time as someone on earth, he also didn't age as much?
- trendia 10y agoWell I bet I can guess what Silicon Valley billionaires will be doing within a decade!
- pizza 10y agoTime dilation should be negligible at low speeds; the effect is gamma = (1-(v/c))^(-.5)
- ajnin 10y agoYou have a small error, gamma is actually (1-v²/c²)^(-.5) , which translates to about 10ms for his 1-year stay in the ISS.
- 10y ago
- cixin 10y agoOff the top of my head: I wonder if astronauts are on lower calorie diets than usual. 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.
- malux85 10y agoCorrect 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-mars-be-on-the-human-body-we-now-have-a-peek-into-what-the-nasa https://www.nasa.gov/feature/how-stressful-will-a-trip-to-ma...
- adrenalinelol 10y agoAren't both of those activities more endemic in generally healthy people anyway (tend to live longer)? It'd be a bit of a stretch to say that it'll improve the genetic variables effecting your lifespan.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- rictic 10y agoI'd characterize the research so far as suggestive, but not conclusive. It's fairly well supported that caloric restriction extends the lives of many rodent species. There have been two primate studies, both finding health benefits but only one finding longevity. No human trials have produced results yet to my knowledge.
- candiodari 10y agoThere is also one sure-fire way to increase telomere length : get cancer. 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-only-7-moonwalkers-still-alive/ 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.
- api 10y agoCould it be radiation hormesis?
- sctb 10y agoYesterday's discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13530595 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13530595
- ramzyo 10y agoAs the original submitter: it seems like this post, although a duplicate, was generating further engaging and informative discussion beyond that discussed in the previous post, arguably more than the previous post (on the basis of number of comments within the first hour being equivalent to number of comments over the course of the 24 hour lifetime of the previous post). Not sure if this was you, but marking as duplicate has effectively killed that discussion by making the post disappear. 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.
- ramzyo 10y agoFurthermore, my intent with this submission was to highlight a specific finding of the research that is not the emphasis of the previous post (namely, the unexpected result involving telomere length). The discussion on this post generally focused on that result, whereas the discussion on the previous post did not.
- sctb 10y agoOK, we've unmarked this one as a dupe and restored it.
- wwkeyboard 10y agoI think this could be solved by having the [dupe] tag link back to the original. I've seen a few posts marked as dupe and it's sometimes difficult to trace down the original.
- zherbert 10y agoMaybe we will determine in the distant future that aging is related to gravity? :)
- probe 10y agoFrom what I've heard/read telomere length as the anti-aging curing may be a bit overrated, because we actually want to prevent cognitive degeneration (who cares if you live longer if you can't think as well). There's a very interesting ongoing study called the Lothian Birth Cohort Study, where they tested cognitive functioning in 11 year olds born in Edinburgh in the years 1921 and 1936. In the late 1990s/early 2000s the individuals were tracked down (now in their 70-80s) and researchers did extensive, extensive testing to try to explain variances in cognitive functioning between their scores at age 11 and now (why did some people lose ability/others gain?) 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 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21194798 [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/projects/gap/cgi-bin/study.cgi?study_id=phs000821.v1.p1 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/projects/gap/cgi-bin/study.cgi?...
- Dan_Nguyen 10y agoRegarding longevity, it's also worth noting that telomere shortening are a very effective anti cancer mechanism. 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.
- dsmithatx 10y agoCould this be as simple as, gravity has an effect on telomeres length?