Briefing Chat: What Brazilian centenarians could reveal about the science of ageing

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Hi listeners, Benjamin here. Welcome to the Nature Briefing Podcast. The Friday show where we talk about a couple of stories we have read in the Nature Briefing, which is of course Nature's daily roundup of the latest science stories. We're actually recording this in the office today, so you might hear a few folks

walk past. But one of the folk who hasn't walked past and is here to talk science with me is Nick Petrichau. Nick, how you doing today? I'm doing well, Ben. I have indeed stopped to come and tell you about some interesting science that I think you'll agree shines a light on some new research.

Well, that has baited the hook, I shall say. But I've got a story that I'm going to talk about first, and it's something that I read about in Nature, and it's about the preliminary findings from a study in Brazil investigating why some people live to a very big age. like over a hundred.

So this is looking at things that I'm guessing allowed them to get to such a great age. Yeah, and it's something that we've covered on the show before, right? The science of aging is incredibly complex, but of course It's of huge interest to a lot of researchers as well, not just extending lifespan, but extending healthy lifespan as well. And this story in particular looks at the DNA longevo study, which is Portuguese for long lived DNA. And this study is still recruiting participants.

But scientists have already sequenced the genomes of more than one hundred and sixty centenarians, so folk over a hundred, and twenty participants.

are super centenarians. Those are people who've reached over a hundred and ten years old. Wow. Okay. So such incredible lifespans and hopefully their genetics can tell us something about how they got there. And genetics is the important word as well. So yeah, you're right. It's hoped that understanding why folk like this can live So long is something that scientists think about.

interested in investigating, you know, for clues about human longevity. And as I say, genetics is key because when you see a local news

Sure, and they've spoken to someone who's over a hundred and you ask'em about their lifestyle, they say, Well, I smoke twenty cigarettes a day and I have a bottle of gin for breakfast, right? So we need to be a little bit careful taking them in isolation. And that appears to be relevant here as well. So early data showed that the supercentenarians in this study did not have especially healthy diets or exercise ratio or access to high end medicine for most

of their lives. And this is why it's thought that the secret might be in their genomes. And so in a recent preliminary report, researchers hypothesized that it is their genetic diversity that could have a role in this resilience because many of the participants have ancestries that are a mixture of European, African and Native American

Heritage, right? Oh right. So by diversity you mean like literal diversity, lots of different ancestors from lots of different places. Exactly right, which is in contrast to a lot of studies investigating the health of centenarians which are focused on populations that are maybe more genetically homogeneous.

So this study's hoping to maybe fill a gap by looking a bit broader in that sense. And one of the scientists who's leading the project says, you know, quote, We know that Brazil has a highly mixed population and that may contribute to their longevity, he says. And another aspect that may be set. This cohort of focal parties that are in the first time.

Most of the participants have managed to stay relatively healthy despite having limited access to medical care. Many of them live in small villages apparently, away from medical centres, which suggest that aging was driven by something other than having access to targeted therapies or early screening for disease. And what speaks to that is the information about some of the participants, which is absolutely wonderful I have to say. And I'll give you some info

on a couple of them. One of them is a hundred and six year old woman who took up swimming at the age of seventy. She won her first competition three decades later. Wow and longevity runs In her family apparently. She has two younger sisters, over a hundred, and she has a hundred and ten year old aunt as well. And this family lives in different parts of the country. So it's not necessarily the fact they're in the same environment. It suggests there's maybe something

Deeper. And I'll give you one more as well. This is a a volunteer, a hundred and seven year old man, and he's thought to be the oldest person to hold a formal job in Brazil. He works in the supermarket organizing the shopping cart. And uh the researchers said when they went to meet him at the supermarket they just walked past him because he was moving so quickly from one side to the other.

be like. And so for these researchers are hoping that these volunteers would really help get a better understanding of

why some people live so long. Yeah, and you said this is a preliminary report. Do they have any sort of tentative findings that, you know, could give us an insight? Well what's happened so far is The researchers have been looking for genetic variants associated with extreme longevity and they're comparing the participants' genomes to those from people in an existing biobank who died of natural causes at younger ages.

Now there's a slight kink to this because ideally the comparison would be made with people born around the same time. But of course that is very challenging when you're including people who are a hundred and six.

Years old because there's not many of those. But there's a bunch of other things as well. The researchers are investigating the immunological profile of the participants and they're measuring biomarkers as well. And one other team says, you know, there's not a lot of reference values for very old So hopefully this will help you.

generate these values and explain what you know normal looks like for this age group of folk who live a really, really long time. Well a super interesting story and I'm sure we'll be doing more stories like that and maybe following up on this study in the future.

But for now I think we can move on to my story this week and this one is looking a little bit more down a microscope. This is about proteins that can be sort of remote controlled using magnets. Some really key words there for me, Nick. You know, I've covered magnets on the podcast in the past, but a magnetically controlled protein Seems very exciting. I mean, it's still very early stages yet. In like your study, this is quite preliminary. But yeah, eventually this could open the door to

proteins that you could control or antibodies that you could switch on and switch off to bind to things more strongly by using magnos. So this is a story that I was reading in Nature and it's based on a nature paper along with some preprints on the same topic. And essentially You're probably familiar with green fluorescence protein, GFP. This is a workhorse of the lab. And as it turns out, about two years ago some researchers discovered

that it's sensitive to magnetic fields. So they showed that it dimmed by about one percent when exposed to a weak magnet. Which is not a great amount, but now in these studies that are covered in this article they've created new proteins based on this that are more sensitive to magnets.

And that's such an interesting finding off the bat, right?'Cause GFP I mean any molecular biologist listening to this show now will go, Oh yeah, of course, right? The protein that we use to see stuff in many cases. And and this tiny difference. when it's magnetised. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what's happened here is they've basically taken GFP and created different versions of it, newer versions that are more sensitive to magnetic fields.

So in this new paper that came out in Nature, they've created a protein called Maglov. And this dims by about fifty percent when exposed to a magnetic field. So a lot stronger effect. And as you mentioned there, GFP is a workhorse of cellular biology. If you look down a microscope, it's great to see things and it's great to label specific things. So having something that you can turn on and off.

is great. And in this study they actually showed that they could identify bacteria that had this Maglov protein in them through a silicon block so they could find like specific bacteria and they could switch this effect on and off. And this is done from a distance, right, with a magnet. Yeah, exactly. Done from a distance with a magnet. And that opens up the possibility if these proteins are sensitive to magnetic fields

could you make other proteins like them that are also sensitive to magnetic fields that could do different things other than like dimming or glowing more brightly? And so there has been some work on an antibody, which is called a magbody, and its binding strength can be controlled by a magnet. So you could get a antibody, which are things that bind to proteins on the surface of cells, you could get it to bind more or less strongly

by using magnetic fields. And magnets, of course, you know, are fairly commonplace in medical settings, for example. I think of MRI, which uses incredibly strong magnets. But maybe weaker magnets could be used to guide proteins to where they need to be? Yeah, they think there's a lot of different things that this

proof of principle could be used for. There's some researchers who were interviewed for this article who weren't involved with this work and one of them said that they think this idea has a lot of great potential. And what they've been doing as well, the researchers behind this, is they've been doing something called directed evolution.

and this is where you basically start off with a protein or a gene or something like that and then you have a desired outcome and you basically mutate it, you do a bunch of mutations, and then you look at which one of the resultant proteins or genes come closest to your desired outcome and then you repeat the process to sort of like guide evolution, he says in inverted quotes.

towards your particular goal. So they've done this for this to try and create proteins that have stronger effects and you could do this for other things as well. So you said then this is kind of a proof of principle early step. in this pathway then what happens next? This, as I said, was done in bacteria. It won't surprise you to learn that it was done in E. coli. E. coli again a workhorse of the lab. So the next steps would be to try and do it in animals. And there has been a preprint.

that has shown that this works in C. elegans. Again, another workhorse of the lab. All the workhorse of the lab are coming together. And so while there's been some preliminary things, you could use this to monitor different cellular processes. As you said, this is magnets, it can be done from a distance, so you could like monitor things as they go along and it can penetrate tissues as well, magnets. So you could do a lot more with this, but obviously a lot more work to be done.

Well illuminating stuff, Nick. Thank you very much, as always. Listeners, we will put links. To both of those stories in the show notes and a link on where you can sign up for the Nature Briefing, where you can get even more stories like this delivered directly to your inbox. But for the time being, I've been Benjamin Thompson, Nick Petrichow. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for having me.

Why choose a sleep number smartbed? Can I make my sight softer? Can I make my sight Can we sleep cooler? Sleep number does that cools up to eight times to a few. And let you choose your ideal comfort on either side, your sleep number setting. Enjoy personalized comfort for better sleep night after night. And now, during our President's Day sale. 50% off our limited edition bed, plus free premium delivery with any bed and base. Only at a sleep number store or sleepnumber.com.

Not every sale happens at the register. Before ATT Business Wireless, checking out customers on our mobile POS systems took too long. Basically a steering contest where everyone loses. It's crazy what people will say during an awkward silence. Now transactions are done before the silence takes hold. That means I can focus on the task at hand and make an extra sale or two. Sometimes I do miss the bonding time. Sometimes. ATT business wireless. Connecting changes everything.