The blood of a long-lived woman will help to unravel the secret of longevity

Born in 1890, the Dutch Hendrikje van Andel-Schipper (Hendrikje van Andel-Schipper) was once considered the oldest woman in the world. Until his death in 2005 (at the age of 115) she maintained a perfectly clear mind and good health, including a perfectly functioning circulatory system.

She bequeathed her body to science, with which her relatives fully agreed, who expressed the wish that all the results obtained, as well as the name of the long-lived woman, be made public.

As a result of the study of blood cells and van Andel-Schipper tissues, an international team of researchers from the Netherlands, the USA and Australia found facts indicating that human life expectancy can be determined by the ability of stem cells to renew aging tissues day after day.

Reaching the stage of depletion by stem cells limits the duration of their life, which leads to the gradual death of these cells and a decrease in the body's ability to regenerate vital organs and tissues.

In the case of van Andel-Schipper, the results of genome-wide DNA sequencing showed that at the end of her life, almost all the leukocytes circulating in her body were descendants of only two related hematopoietic stem cells. The authors came to this conclusion based on the results of the analysis of mutations in the DNA of leukocytes. In the vast majority of leukocytes were carriers of a large number of identical neutral somatic mutations (about 450), the distribution of which clearly indicated that the cells belonged to one of two closely related hematopoietic clones. Apparently, all the other hematopoietic cells of the bone marrow of the long-lived woman had already exhausted their reserves by the time of her death and died.

According to experts, a person is born with about twenty thousand hematopoietic cells, about 1,000 of which are actively functioning at any given time. As the body ages, the number of active cells decreases, their telomeres are shortened to a critical value, after which they die from exhaustion.

The version of the death of these cells from exhaustion is confirmed by the very small telomere length of the remaining leukocytes. The telomeres of leukocytes were much shorter than the telomeres of cells of other van Andel-Schipper tissues. The most significant comparison with the telomeres of neurons of the brain that practically do not divide during life, which turned out to be on average 17 times longer than the telomeres of leukocytes.

The authors note that the results obtained indicate a very interesting possibility of rejuvenating the body by introducing its own hematopoietic stem cells cryopreserved in childhood or adolescence. These cells will contain a minimal number of mutations and have long telomeres. Unfortunately, this approach is not only theoretical, but if the hypothesis is confirmed, it will only rejuvenate the blood.

In the future, researchers, by comparing the van Andel-Schipper genome with the genomes of patients with early-onset Alzheimer's disease, hope to find genes that protect against the development of this disease.

Article by Holstege et al. Somatic mutations found in the healthy blood compartment of a 115-year-old woman demonstrate oligoclonal hematopoiesis is published in the journal Genome Research.

Evgeniya Ryabtseva
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru based on the materials of New Scientist:
Blood of world's oldest woman hints at limits of life

24.04.2014