New research finds a remarkable correlation between species’ average longevity and rate of telomere attrition

Dr. Maria Blasco and her team have discovered a remarkable correlation between the average longevity of organisms of various species and the rate of telomere attrition in those species. Kurt Whittemore, a postdoc in Blasco’s Telomeres and Telomerase research lab at the Spanish National Cancer Research Center, was the lead author of a major new paper called “Telomere shortening rate predicts species life span.” Here’s the “money” chart from the paper (Figure 3):

And here’s the version of that plot with more data, from the same paper (Figure 2):

Humans are the longest-lived of the 9 species examined and, lo and behold, we have the slowest rate of telomere attrition, which is the rate at which base-pairs are lost from telomeres with each cell division. Humans have a low rate of just 70 bp/year (base pairs per year). Mice are the shortest-lived and have the highest rate of attrition, at about 7,000 bp/year.

This very regular curve is to me highly convincing evidence that telomeres are, if not the only, at least the major control center for programmed aging, a la Josh Mitteldorf’s theory that species are subject to group selection and ecosystem selection effects that make us all live far shorter lives than we could if nature used all of her tricks to maintain individual health and longevity.