«Jumping genes» at the heart of eternal youth

On average, termites live from two months to two years for workers and “warriors”, but their kings and queens live dozens of times longer (25 to 50 years). If common termites could live as long as humans, the age of their monarch would reach 1,000 years.

Professor Judith Korb of the University of Freiburg, together with her team, has long been studying the secrets of the youth of termite queens. For 30 years now, they have been visiting a corner of the savannah in Côte d’Ivoire to study termites.

“The scientists’ findings, published in the journal PNAS, establish that aging in this species is linked to the activity of “jumping genes.” These moveable DNA elements belong to a group of so-called selfish elements: they are spontaneously duplicated and can move or copy themselves independently of the central mechanisms that control the copying of the rest of the DNA, such as cell division. In doing so, jumping genes can disrupt the normal functioning of other genes near which they move. When proteins and energy are no longer produced, this can lead to aging and death, the researcher summarizes,” Swiss newspaper Le Temps reports.

“Judith Korb has made an intriguing observation: in monarchs, jumping genes are inactive, which explains their longevity. It now remains to be seen why. ‘These insects are protected from aging by some kind of defense mechanism that suppresses the jumping genes,’ wrote the paper’s journalist Kamij Lavoie.” “By October, we will inject DNA fragments into the heads of termites. These fragments will attack the monarchs’ defense mechanism,” explains Judith Korb. “If their jumping genes are reactivated and the insects die prematurely, the researcher will prove a causal link between their defense mechanism against jumping genes and the extraordinary longevity of queens and kings.”

“Jumping genes are very common in animals. They have been studied in mice and in humans. “It is rare to establish a causal relationship based on scientific experiments; this has only been done in Drosophila flies,” the professor states. If the results of her research are confirmed, it will not only be conclusive experiments for the second species, i.e. termites, but will also open up the possibility of applying this mechanism to humans,” says the author of the publication.

“Termites promise to become promising new models for research in gerontology. This is how a collaboration with the Paul Ehrlich Institute in Langen, in Germany, has been established to apply the results of this study to humans,” the article says.

“We don’t know how long it will take to suppress jumping genes in humans … and whether we’ll even get there! It will take at least a decade to finally understand this mechanism at the termite level, and then clinical trials will need to be conducted, first in mice,” the biologist points out.

Source: InoPressa