Evolution, stress, and longevity

Longevity, Genetics, Evolution

The evolution of longevity

Why look for more photosensory and photoisomerase opsins? Photoreception is not limited to the rods and cones, but can occur in cells of the inner retina, pineal, brain or skin. Action spectra for these photoresponses have implicated opsin/vitamin A based photopigments, but the photosensory genes and proteins remain unknown. It is also unclear how photopigment chromophore is regenerated in phot...

Grandmothers and the evolution of human longevity.

Great apes, our closest living relatives, live longer and mature later than most other mammals and modern humans are even later-maturing and potentially longer-lived. Evolutionary life-history theory seeks to explain cross-species differences in these variables and the covariation between them. That provides the foundation for a hypothesis that a novel role for grandmothers underlies the shift ...

Longevity and stress in Caenorhabditis elegans

It has long been understood that many of the same manipulations that increase longevity in Caenorhabditis elegans also increase resistance to various acute stressors, and vice-versa; moreover these findings hold in more complex organisms as well. Nevertheless, the mechanistic relationship between these phenotypes remains unclear, and in many cases the overlap between stress resistance and longe...

Evolution of male longevity bias in nematodes.

Many animal species exhibit sex differences in aging. In the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, under conditions that minimize mortality, males are the longer-lived sex. In a survey of 12 independent C. elegans isolates, we find that this is a species-typical character. To test the hypothesis that the C. elegans male longevity bias evolved as a consequence of androdioecy (having males and hermaph...