Comment on Is it true that the natural lifespan of humans is only 38 years old and we only live past that because of loads of modern medicines/technology?

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AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

Unless I missed something, the word “telomeres” doesn’t occur in the article or its source paper—rather, it discusses the rate of DNA methylation.

IMO, the key passage in the paper is this:

However, any genetic regulation for a species may potentially be a secondary factor as there may be other environmental selective pressures. This may be the case with species which have lifespans post reproductive age and therefore, there may be non-genetic factors that may be more predictive of their maximum lifespan.

I suspect that the methylation rate is actually tracking the end of the reproductive stage of the lifecycle, rather than the length of the lifecycle as a whole.

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