{"id":263443,"date":"2025-10-31T19:29:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-31T19:29:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/263443\/"},"modified":"2025-10-31T19:29:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-31T19:29:09","slug":"whale-that-repairs-own-dna-may-hold-secret-of-far-longer-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/263443\/","title":{"rendered":"Whale that repairs own DNA may hold secret of far longer life"},"content":{"rendered":"

Humans spend fortunes on lotions, supplements and fads that promise to slow aging. The bowhead whale, a giant denizen of Arctic waters, has no such anxieties. It lives for centuries, rarely succumbing to cancer or other ailments that cut our lives short.<\/p>\n

How does such a massive creature \u2014 weighing some 80 tonnes, with billions upon billions of cells \u2014 stay healthy for so long? Could its biology offer humans clues on how to defy age itself?<\/p>\n

Scientists at the University of Rochester in New York think so. In a study published in Nature, they have identified a protein known as CIRBP that appears to play a key role in prolonging the whale\u2019s life. The molecule \u2014 short for \u201ccold-inducible RNA-binding protein\u201d \u2014 helps repair damaged DNA, a defence that fends off cancer<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

The whales can reach up to 20m in length<\/p>\n

ALAMY<\/p>\n

When the researchers added the whale version of CIRBP to human cells, they repaired broken DNA more accurately. In fruit flies, it even extended their lives.<\/p>\n

\u2022 What Earth\u2019s biggest animals could teach us about beating cancer<\/a><\/p>\n

Professor Vera Gorbunova, who led the study, believes the results could point to a treatment that allows future generations \u201cto live longer than the typical human lifespan\u201d.<\/p>\n

With some bowhead whales believed to be at least 250 years old, the species is the longest-lived mammal. \u201cIt\u2019s a superstar of longevity research,\u201d said Dr Alex Cagan, an evolutionary geneticist at the Wellcome Sanger Institute in the UK.<\/p>\n

By studying the mammals, scientists hope to untangle a biological puzzle known as Peto\u2019s paradox. Big animals, such as whales and elephants, should face higher cancer risks than small ones \u2014 simply because they have more cells dividing over longer lifespans. For some reason, or combination of reasons, they do not.<\/p>\n

\u2022 The 30 beluga whales on \u2018death row\u2019 after years of alleged neglect<\/a><\/p>\n

Each cell division requires DNA to be copied and duplicated. In humans, that process inevitably introduces errors in the DNA code, or \u201concogenic hits\u201d \u2014 mutations that can trigger tumours. <\/p>\n

Initially, Gorbunova and her colleagues hypothesised that the whales\u2019 secret was that they could withstand large numbers of these hits without developing cancer. Their results, however, revealed something different: whale cells were accumulating far fewer cancer-causing mutations to start with.<\/p>\n

\"Bowhead<\/p>\n

Despite their size, the cancer risk among bowhead whales is lower than humans<\/p>\n

ALAMY<\/p>\n

CIRBP appears to be central to that resilience. The protein helps fix the most perilous form of genetic damage, so-called double-strand breaks to the DNA double helix \u2014 the structure inside the cell that carries genetic information. Bowhead whale cells perform these repairs both more efficiently and more accurately than those of humans or mice. As a result, its DNA stays pristine for an unusually long time.<\/p>\n

The strategy differs from that seen in elephants. The largest land mammal defies cancer by having numerous copies of so-called \u201ctumour-suppressor\u201d genes. These effectively kill off cells that have accumulated dangerous mutations.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Why whaling captains will benefit from Trump\u2019s One Big Beautiful Bill<\/a><\/p>\n

The whale, by contrast, pursues what the researchers call a \u201cconservative\u201d strategy: it keeps its DNA in good repair, stopping it from becoming corrupted in their first place.<\/p>\n

Cagan said the findings were \u201cintriguing\u201d, adding: \u201cIt would be great to see them replicated by another lab just to increase our confidence. But overall, it\u2019s a very compelling result.\u201d The work \u201cpoints the way towards new therapeutic angles that could be explored\u201d, he said.<\/p>\n

The clue to why the whales have so much CIRBP may lie in their very cold Arctic habitat. Production of the protein rises when temperatures fall. \u201cIf we just lower the temperature a few degrees, cells make more CIRBP,\u201d said Andrei Seluanov, a co-author of the study.<\/p>\n

\"Bowhead<\/p>\n

That detail has sparked speculation. Scientists were already asking whether mild exposure to chilly temperatures could help protect humans from disease. If it does, could the human version of CIRBP play a role? \u201cLifestyle changes \u2014 things like taking cold showers \u2014 might contribute and might be worth exploring,\u201d Gorbunova said.<\/p>\n

Her team\u2019s next steps will include testing whether CIRBP \u2014 or drugs that activate its production \u2014 reliably and safely improves DNA repair in smaller, shorter-lived mammals. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere are different ways to improve genome maintenance. Here we learn there is one unique way that evolved in bowhead whales where they dramatically increase the levels of this protein,\u201d she said. \u201cNow we have to see if we can develop strategies to upregulate the same pathway in humans.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Humans spend fortunes on lotions, supplements and fads that promise to slow aging. The bowhead whale, a giant…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":263444,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[79,201],"class_list":{"0":"post-263443","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=263443"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263443\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/263444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}