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The longest living creatures on Earth have been found

23.07.2017

American scientists have discovered the longest-lived creatures on Earth, the secret of which they hope to use to extend human life. These are deep sea sessile worms from the bottom of the Caribbean Sea, some of which are over 300 years old.

Individuals of Escarpia laminata cross a border in longevity that no other species of living creatures has ever crossed. And since it is impossible to accurately determine the age for the longest individuals of this species, it is possible that some of them live even longer.

Worms are more suitable for experimentation and study than rare tortoises and giant cetaceans, which were previously considered long-lived record holders. Individuals living in one place all their lives near hydrothermal vents and "black smokers" at the bottom of the sea feed on plankton and the remains of other organisms that are caught from the water. Escarpia laminata tubes grow very slowly - about half a millimeter per year, and the age of the longest individuals exceeds 300 years.

Part of the secret to their longevity is that these worms almost never die - the mortality rate in their colonies does not exceed 0,6% even for the oldest individuals, which is about 15 times lower than the values \uXNUMXb\uXNUMXbpredicted by theory. Perhaps this is due to the low temperature of the waters in which Escarpia laminata and other deep-sea worms live.

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Scientists have done the impossible and completely reworked the E. coli genome, eliminating all unnecessary from it and replacing the original genes with their synthetic counterparts.

With all the great diversity, life on Earth uses the same "language" - DNA. A handful of conventional chemical "letters" are used to create dozens of three-letter sequences, each of which conveys a specific set of information to protein structures. The four letters of non-glutinous acids - adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine (A, C, G, T) - can be combined into 64 combinations of three-letter "words", the so-called codons.

Modern life forms are represented by only 61 codons that form 20 amino acids. The other three are punctuation marks of sorts, denoting the endpoint of a particular gene's pattern in a continuous chain. Thus, our genes often use several different fragments to represent the same trait. This creates a huge redundancy of information, but there are good reasons for that. In nature, this allows the body to quickly adapt to environmental changes, but is it possible to keep the number of codons to a minimum under controlled laboratory conditions?

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As a result, the Syn61 variant turned out to be the most viable - with it, the cells are visually longer and at the same time multiply 1,6 times slower. That being said, the "edited" E. coli appears to be healthy and works with the same range of proteins as the original version. For researchers, this is very good news, convincingly proving that genetic engineering is capable of literally replacing wildlife with synthetic equal nature to the extent that a person needs it, while preserving life itself.

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