Bat Genome Study Links Longevity to Immune Defense — SkimNews
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- UC Berkeley researchers published the first analysis of eight Myotis bat genomes in Nature, finding that longer-lived species carried higher levels of genes associated with fighting cancer and defending against infection.
- Juan Manuel Vazquez grew cells from the longest-lived bat in his sample, the little brown bat (Myotis lucifugus), and found they responded to toxic damage by promoting cell death rather than producing DNA repair proteins — the opposite of what researchers expected and a strategy also seen in elephants, another cancer-resistant long-lived species.
- Brandt's myotis (Myotis brandtii) was banded in Europe and recaptured 50 years later, while the closely related black Myotis of Central and South America lives only about seven years — a gap the researchers compared to hypothetical Neanderthals outliving modern humans ninefold.
- Vazquez and collaborator Elise Lauterbur, then at the University of Arizona, found far more overlap than chance would predict between genes associated with bat longevity and genes involved in viral interactions.
- Myotis bats carry an unusually large number of genes producing proteins that interact with DNA viruses such as herpes, while humans and other primates have more RNA-virus-interacting genes — a mismatch the researchers say helps explain why bat viruses can be dangerous when they spill over to humans.
- The team now maintains cell cultures from 259 individual bats representing 32 species, which Vazquez will continue working with in his new faculty position at Pennsylvania State University.
Why it matters: Comparing Myotis species whose lifespans range from roughly 7 to 50 years gives the Berkeley team a rare natural experiment for isolating longevity genetics, and their finding that the same gene sets also mediate viral interactions means aging research and infectious-disease research may need to be studied together rather than in isolation.
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