Mitochondrial Antioxidants as a Contributing Cause of Naked Mole-Rat Longevity

Naked mole-rats exhibit exceptional longevity in comparison to other rodent species. They can live nine times longer than similarly sized mice, for example. There are no doubt a sizable number of distinct mechanisms that contribute to this difference in species life span, and the existence of mammals with widely divergent life spans acts as a natural laboratory for researchers interested in better understanding aging. If one species lives a much longer life than another, then using their differences in order to identify the more important aspects of cellular metabolism in the matter of aging may well be a faster approach than other strategies that aim to reverse engineer the workings of aging. Thus research groups have been energetically investigating the biochemistry of naked mole-rats for many years now. Naked mole-rats are exceptionally resistant to cancer, to the point at which for all of the populations maintained across the years in laboratories and zoos, only a few cases of cancer have ever been reported. Of late the ability of naked mole-rats to suppress cancerous mutations and cancerous cells has become one of the primary areas of study when it comes to their metabolic peculiarities. Avoiding death by cancer probably isn't one of the most important contributions to naked mole-rat longevity, however. Instead, it seems likely that at least some of the major determinants of longevity relate to mitochondrial function and cellular resistance to oxidative da...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs