5 ms·

Levi-Montalcini is arguably genetically predisposed for longevity. Her twin sister, artist Paola Levi-Montalcini, died at the age of 91 [1] and was still activ

by Donald 17y ago

Levi-Montalcini is arguably genetically predisposed for longevity. Her twin sister, artist Paola Levi-Montalcini, died at the age of 91 [1] and was still actively creating works into the 1990s. [2] _ 1. http://quotidianonet.ilsole24ore.com/2000/09/29/1337059-MORTA-PAOLA-LEVI-MONTALCINI-SORELLA-DI-RITA.shtml http://quotidianonet.ilsole24ore.com/2000/09/29/1337059-MORT... 2. http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/levi-montalcini-paola http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/levi-montalcini-paola

tokenadult 17y ago
Interestingly, longevity has about the lowest broad heritability of any human medical outcome ever studied. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/31/health/31age.html?pagewanted=3 http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/31/health/31age.html?pagewant... I'd be glad to believe that genes matter, because my grandparents lived long, healthy lives, and one of my parents is still living, but I think my ancestors had rather different lifestyles from mine.
- Donald 17y ago
  > "I’ve been in this business for a long while, and life span is probably one of the most weakly heritable traits I’ve ever studied," Dr. McGue said. Evidently "extreme longevity" is more heavily dependent on genetics than non-exceptional lifespans: "Perls and coworkers originally found that the survival ratio for siblings of centenarians versus siblings of 73-year-olds was about fourfold for ages 80–94 (79). In a more recent assessment involving 444 centenarian families, these investigators found that, compared with the U.S. 1900 cohort, male and female siblings of centenarians were at least 17 and 8 times as likely to attain age 100, respectively (80). Similar findings of a much stronger heritability of unusual longevity have been obtained by Kerber et al., who demonstrated an increased recurrence risk for siblings for surviving to extreme ages (81), and Gudmundsson et al., who found that the first-degree relatives of probands who live to an extremely old age are twice as likely as controls to survive to the same age (82)." [1] _ 1. Annu Rev Med. 2005;56:193-212. Quote is from p205. http://pi.edu.pk/donald/genetics.of.longevity.and.aging.pdf http://pi.edu.pk/donald/genetics.of.longevity.and.aging.pdf
  - deleted 17y ago
    [deleted]
- Allocator2008 17y ago
  I think that makes total sense, in terms of longevity not being broadly inherited. Why would it be? Once an organism has lived long enough to be able to reproduce and no longer is able to reproduce, there is no evolutionary purpose for that organism to stick around. Genetic drift could account for some people having more longevity than others, but I see no selective advantage for it, from the point of view of the gene. Thus it makes sense that not too many people would be genetically pre-disposed towards longevity. Personally, I don't mind the James Dean ethos: "Live fast, die young, and leave a beautiful corpse behind!" :-)
  - derefr 17y ago
    Technically, there's no reason that organisms should reach a point where they're "no longer able to reproduce"; I think it's merely a random choice of our most basic biology that we grow "old" and then die from various diseases and systems failures, rather than simply surviving until there are so many [generations] of us around at once that some individuals can no longer find food. This is the way that asexual species, like bacteria, function. You'd think it would actually be in the best interest of any given organism to have as long a reproductive lifetime as possible, and therefore fitness would increase along with longevity, as long as that longevity remained virile/fertile. Then again... If the old did instead survive to compete with the young, evolution would start to fail as a process—you'd have too many non-adapted organisms reproducing with one another, and so what adaptation there was would happen much more slowly. Today, sexual species that have "dropped back down" into being asexual, reproducing by cloning or the like (which have the same evolutionary disadvantage as a non-aging species would have, but more so) can survive and prosper. However, far enough back in the genetic soup, when sexual species first diverged from asexual ones, there was probably a fierce competition where being a sexual species was only a little better (it requires more resources, after all), and so aging provided an immediate advantage in terms of setting an equilibrium point for species size, so as to not strain resources. (This may very well be taught in an intro Bio class, but I love discovering things on my own in the form of meditative writing. It's a fact completely untaught in schools today that knowledge lies at your fingertips that you're completely unaware of, not from a book or a website or another person, but from your own mind, and that you can access it without having to have anyone guide you to it. Philosophy is neglected as a means to pursue ordinary, practical knowledge, but it's really just a super-set of science: there's still a hypothesis, experimentation, observations and a conclusion, it's just that the "experimentation" doesn't require a physical world. In the case above, obviously, it would be better to have an actual scientific study, but the very fact that you can derive a preliminary intuition of a topic without anyone telling you what to think, or giving you a demonstration one way or the other, is revelation enough for most people in the world today.)
- baddox 17y ago
  More likely, longevity in families is due to the lifestyle they were encouraged to have by their families.
  - barry-cotter 17y ago
    More or less agree, Okinawan-Americans don't have much higher life expectancy than your average Asian-American, which is probably due to lifestyle, but Donald pointed out ^ that extreme longevity appears to have a large genetic component.
  - mbrubeck 17y ago
    Do you have evidence for that? On the contrary, multiple twin studies have found zero correlation of "shared environment" with longevity: http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2009/04/do_parents_affe.html http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2009/04/do_parents_affe.... In these studies, identical twins who are adopted and raised apart have just as much correlation in lifespan as identical twins raised together, suggesting that genetics (rather than family lifestyle) is the cause of the correlation.
joe_the_user 17y ago
The secret of a long, alert life is probably as important as the secret to a long life. To live to 100 and be able to say you feel more intellectually able than when you are twenty is quite something. Even doing that till 85 would impressive.
- Tichy 17y ago
  I found it interesting that the Sciam article about these substances was published when she was already 70. Probably she had studied them before, but still, I guess she was still very active by 70.
joe_the_user 17y ago
Have you considered that she could have shared her "secret of longevity" with her. Again, teasing out environment and heredity is hard.

by Donald 17y ago

tokenadult 17y ago

Interestingly, longevity has about the lowest broad heritability of any human medical outcome ever studied. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/31/health/31age.html?pagewanted=3 http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/31/health/31age.html?pagewant... I'd be glad to believe that genes matter, because my grandparents lived long, healthy lives, and one of my parents is still living, but I think my ancestors had rather different lifestyles from mine.

Donald 17y ago
> "I’ve been in this business for a long while, and life span is probably one of the most weakly heritable traits I’ve ever studied," Dr. McGue said. Evidently "extreme longevity" is more heavily dependent on genetics than non-exceptional lifespans: "Perls and coworkers originally found that the survival ratio for siblings of centenarians versus siblings of 73-year-olds was about fourfold for ages 80–94 (79). In a more recent assessment involving 444 centenarian families, these investigators found that, compared with the U.S. 1900 cohort, male and female siblings of centenarians were at least 17 and 8 times as likely to attain age 100, respectively (80). Similar findings of a much stronger heritability of unusual longevity have been obtained by Kerber et al., who demonstrated an increased recurrence risk for siblings for surviving to extreme ages (81), and Gudmundsson et al., who found that the first-degree relatives of probands who live to an extremely old age are twice as likely as controls to survive to the same age (82)." [1] _ 1. Annu Rev Med. 2005;56:193-212. Quote is from p205. http://pi.edu.pk/donald/genetics.of.longevity.and.aging.pdf http://pi.edu.pk/donald/genetics.of.longevity.and.aging.pdf
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
Allocator2008 17y ago
I think that makes total sense, in terms of longevity not being broadly inherited. Why would it be? Once an organism has lived long enough to be able to reproduce and no longer is able to reproduce, there is no evolutionary purpose for that organism to stick around. Genetic drift could account for some people having more longevity than others, but I see no selective advantage for it, from the point of view of the gene. Thus it makes sense that not too many people would be genetically pre-disposed towards longevity. Personally, I don't mind the James Dean ethos: "Live fast, die young, and leave a beautiful corpse behind!" :-)
- derefr 17y ago
  Technically, there's no reason that organisms should reach a point where they're "no longer able to reproduce"; I think it's merely a random choice of our most basic biology that we grow "old" and then die from various diseases and systems failures, rather than simply surviving until there are so many [generations] of us around at once that some individuals can no longer find food. This is the way that asexual species, like bacteria, function. You'd think it would actually be in the best interest of any given organism to have as long a reproductive lifetime as possible, and therefore fitness would increase along with longevity, as long as that longevity remained virile/fertile. Then again... If the old did instead survive to compete with the young, evolution would start to fail as a process—you'd have too many non-adapted organisms reproducing with one another, and so what adaptation there was would happen much more slowly. Today, sexual species that have "dropped back down" into being asexual, reproducing by cloning or the like (which have the same evolutionary disadvantage as a non-aging species would have, but more so) can survive and prosper. However, far enough back in the genetic soup, when sexual species first diverged from asexual ones, there was probably a fierce competition where being a sexual species was only a little better (it requires more resources, after all), and so aging provided an immediate advantage in terms of setting an equilibrium point for species size, so as to not strain resources. (This may very well be taught in an intro Bio class, but I love discovering things on my own in the form of meditative writing. It's a fact completely untaught in schools today that knowledge lies at your fingertips that you're completely unaware of, not from a book or a website or another person, but from your own mind, and that you can access it without having to have anyone guide you to it. Philosophy is neglected as a means to pursue ordinary, practical knowledge, but it's really just a super-set of science: there's still a hypothesis, experimentation, observations and a conclusion, it's just that the "experimentation" doesn't require a physical world. In the case above, obviously, it would be better to have an actual scientific study, but the very fact that you can derive a preliminary intuition of a topic without anyone telling you what to think, or giving you a demonstration one way or the other, is revelation enough for most people in the world today.)
baddox 17y ago
More likely, longevity in families is due to the lifestyle they were encouraged to have by their families.
- barry-cotter 17y ago
  More or less agree, Okinawan-Americans don't have much higher life expectancy than your average Asian-American, which is probably due to lifestyle, but Donald pointed out ^ that extreme longevity appears to have a large genetic component.
- mbrubeck 17y ago
  Do you have evidence for that? On the contrary, multiple twin studies have found zero correlation of "shared environment" with longevity: http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2009/04/do_parents_affe.html http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2009/04/do_parents_affe.... In these studies, identical twins who are adopted and raised apart have just as much correlation in lifespan as identical twins raised together, suggesting that genetics (rather than family lifestyle) is the cause of the correlation.

joe_the_user 17y ago

The secret of a long, alert life is probably as important as the secret to a long life. To live to 100 and be able to say you feel more intellectually able than when you are twenty is quite something. Even doing that till 85 would impressive.

Tichy 17y ago
I found it interesting that the Sciam article about these substances was published when she was already 70. Probably she had studied them before, but still, I guess she was still very active by 70.

joe_the_user 17y ago

Have you considered that she could have shared her "secret of longevity" with her. Again, teasing out environment and heredity is hard.