16 Genetic Markers Linked to Lifespan

저자：   업로드：2017-08-01  조회수：

    Researchers have identified the largest-ever number of genetic markers – most of which are brand new to science – that are linked to life expectancy.

    A research team based in Switzerland has pinpointed a massive haul of genetic markers. It is the largest group of such genetic markers ever identified. The vast majority of them are new to science. They are directly tied to the life expectancy of human beings. All but two of these single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) are brand new to science. The research was made possible thanks to the support of the Swiss Initiative of Bioinformatics (SIB) in Systems Biology.

    Findings from the new study, published recently in Nature Communications in an article entitled “Bayesian Association Scan Reveals Loci Associated with Human Lifespan and Linked Biomarkers”, revealed an unparalleled number of SNPs associated with lifespan (16), including 14 previously unknown variants. While the environment in which we live, including our socio-economic status and the food we eat, plays a considerable role in longevity, about 20% to 30% of the variation in human lifespan comes down to our genome. Changes in particular locations in our DNA sequence may hold some of the keys to human endurance.

    “In our approach, we prioritized changes in the DNA known to be linked to age-related diseases in order to scan the genome more efficiently," noted senior study investigator Zoltán Kutalik, Ph.D., group leader at SIB and assistant professor at the Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine (CHUV). “This is the largest set of lifespan-associated genetic markers ever uncovered.”

    About 1 in 10 people carry some configurations of these markers that shorten their life by over a year compared with the population average. Moreover, the researchers found that a person inheriting a lifespan-shortening version of one of these SNPs may die up to seven months earlier.

    “...we developed a Mendelian randomization-based method combining 58 disease-related GWA [genome-wide association] studies to derive longevity priors for all HapMap SNPs,” the authors wrote. “A Bayesian association scan, informed by these priors, for parental age of death in the UK Biobank study (n=116,279) revealed 16 independent SNPs with significant Bayes factor at a 5% false discovery rate (FDR). Eleven of them replicate (5% FDR) in five independent longevity studies combined; all but three are depleted of the life-shortening alleles in older Biobank participants.”