Hendrikje van Andel - Schipper die at the mature honest-to-goodness age of 115 in 2005 , make her one of the longest lived man on disk . For a woman her old age she was also in considerably serious wellness until curtly before she go past away . She was also genial enough to donate her body to skill and scientists have been eager to get hold out more about her , which may help oneself to increase our understanding of senescence . In particular , researcher ground at the VU University Medical Center in Amsterdam were cutting to sleep with more about the accumulation of mutations in somatic electric cell as we age .
In thestudy , which has been published in the journalGenome Research , the squad used cryptical whole - genome sequencing and found 450 somatic mutations within her hefty white blood mobile phone . what is more , these sport were enriched in noncoding regions that are not evolutionarily conserved and appeared to be harmless passenger mutations , unlike those associated with disease .
mistake in deoxyribonucleic acid replication are often made during cellular phone part , but the majority of the time they are removed as mutations can take to disease . The fact that these mutant were not associated with diseasesuggeststhat her body was very efficient at removing harmful mutation , and certify the sheer number of mutations that may be present and tolerated in normal , healthy tissue .
Further investigation precede the scientists to come across that the majority of her whitened blood cells were derived from just two stem cells . This suggested that her syndicate of stem cell was severely depleted since it is estimated that at parentage we have just about 20,000 line stem cell .
They also find out that the telomeres ( protective detonator at the ends of chromosome ) on her blank rake prison cell were extremely unforesightful ; around 17 meter shorter than those found on her brain cells , which are more still in comparison to the on a regular basis divide blood cells . Telomere shortening is a natural , gradual process that go on as cells split . However , after a sure point is get hold of the cells will die ; as this occurs in our stem cadre we get something called stem - cell exhaustion .
Taken together these results suggest that , perhaps not surprisingly , one limiting constituent in our lifespan is our puddle of root jail cell ; as they slow diminish , we miss the ability to regenerate tissues .
These results also suggest that one day , it may be possible to slow down the appendage of ageing by replenish the torso with shank cellular phone bring from soul when they were much new . “ If I took a sample now and gave it back to myself when I ’m older , I would have long telomeres again- although it might only be possible with blood , not other tissue , ” lead author of the study Henne Holstege toldNew Scientist .
