
Naked mole-rat mortality rates defy Gompertzian laws by not increasing with age [pdf] - lawrenceyan
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5783610/pdf/elife-31157.pdf
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sungam
Could it not be that the lifespan is just significantly longer than the
observation period? If we looked at human mortality in a sample of a few
thousand individuals over the first 30 years of life it would also appear
rather flat.

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lawlessone
>If we looked at human mortality in a sample of a few thousand individuals
over the first 30 years of life it would also appear rather flat.

it's not

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gompertz%E2%80%93Makeham_law_o...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gompertz%E2%80%93Makeham_law_of_mortality)

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Retric
He is actually mentioning a real effect. Note the flat part around 20-30 years
old:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gompertz%E2%80%93Makeham_law_o...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gompertz%E2%80%93Makeham_law_of_mortality#/media/File:USGompertzCurve.svg)

If that's all the data you had it would look like an S curve with an odd
starting anomaly at <1 year old.

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mdonahoe
what is "censorship" as defined in that study?

Example in context: ". Right-censorship was applied in three cases: if the
animal was (1) transferred to another collection, with the date of transfer
considered as the censorship event; (2) euthanized for research purposes when
still healthy, with the date of sacrifice as the censorship event; or (3)
still alive when the process of compiling records was completed, with the date
of completion as the censorship event (see Materials and methods)."

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mrhappyunhappy
If the naked mole rat does not age in terms of negative consequences of age,
what makes them die at 30?

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Nasrudith
What makes them die younger is the real question. Their curve is pretty flat
as a trend line (although with plenty of peaks and valleys) and seems to start
at 600 day old mouse mortality rates. Although they are also infamously
inbred.

I wonder if it would be possible to breed for lifespan by breeding only the
'elders' among them or if it would do about as much good as breeding for
resistance to gunshots - outside circumstances not influencible.

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solveit
It works on fruit flies, see Rose, M. Laboratory Evolution of Postponed
Senescence in Drosophila melanogaster. Evolution (1984), where the lifespan
was doubled.

So this certainly works in principle. For longer lived species I expect it
will still work, but it would take hundreds to thousands of years to breed for
even a few dozen generations.

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rincebrain
I would be concerned with secondary effects of aging on viability of gametes
and chances of exotic conditions - doing this over any large span of
generations would probably (temporarily?) yield a much higher mortality rate
until we figured out the best ratio of increased parent lifespan to increased
child mortality.

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adrianN
With humans you probably wouldn't want to wait with the breeding until the
parents are old, but select breeding pairs based on the longevity of their
(great-)grandparents. At least until you figure out useful biomarkers that
reliably predict longevity already at the age of twenty or so.

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partingshots
Always nice to see updates on what research is being done at Calico.

