Sea urchins don't age
"The Attic"Scientists from the biological laboratory of Mount Desert Island in the USA found out that sea urchins do not age (Is Aging Inevitable? Not Necessarily for Sea Urchins – VM).
"We found that aging is not inevitable. Sea urchins do not age with age. In light of the new data, we may have to revise existing theories about why aging occurs," says James A. Kofman, co–author of an article published in the journal Aging Cell (Bodnar, Coffman, Maintenance of somatic tissue regeneration with age in short- and long-lived species of sea urchins).
Scientists have studied regeneration in three species of hedgehogs with different life spans.
They amputated parts of the body in animals and observed how quickly they regenerate, as well as measured the activity of genes encoding enzymes that are characteristic of actively dividing cells and are found in animals with high regenerative ability, for example, in coelenterates and planarians.
The study showed that even those species of sea urchins that do not live long do not begin to age after reaching reproductive age. Tissue regeneration and the activity of genes responsible for cell growth do not change throughout the life of these animals, which refuted the assumptions of scientists who expected that in short-lived species it would be clearly noticeable how regeneration worsens over the course of life.
Further research should reveal the mechanisms of eternal youth of sea urchins, in particular the role of the immune system.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru 01.06.2016