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from the it's-a-little-late-to-choose-your-parents dept.
Family tree of 400 million people shows genetics has limited influence on longevity
Although long life tends to run in families, genetics has far less influence on life span than previously thought, according to a new analysis of an aggregated set of family trees of more than 400 million people. The results suggest that the heritability of life span is well below past estimates, which failed to account for our tendency to select partners with similar traits to our own. The research, from Calico Life Sciences and Ancestry, was published in GENETICS, a journal of the Genetics Society of America.
"We can potentially learn many things about the biology of aging from human genetics, but if the heritability of life span is low, it tempers our expectations about what types of things we can learn and how easy it will be," says lead author Graham Ruby. "It helps contextualize the questions that scientists studying aging can effectively ask."
Ruby's employer, Calico Life Sciences, is a research and development company whose mission is to understand the biology of aging. They teamed up with scientists from the online genealogy resource Ancestry, led by Chief Scientific Officer Catherine Ball, to use publicly available pedigree data from Ancestry.com to estimate the heritability of human life span. [...] Previous estimates of human life span heritability have ranged from around 15 to 30 percent.
[...] The first hint that something more than either genetics or shared environment might be at work was the finding that siblings-in-law and first-cousins-in-law had correlated life spans -- despite not being blood relatives and not generally sharing households. [...] If they don't share genetic backgrounds and they don't share households, what best accounts for the similarity in life span between individuals with these relationship types? Going back to their impressive dataset, the researchers were able to perform analyses that detected assortative mating.
[...] The basis of this mate choice could be genetic or sociocultural -- or both. For a non-genetic example, if income influences life span, and wealthy people tend to marry other wealthy people, that would lead to correlated longevity. The same would occur for traits more controlled by genetics: if, for example, tall people prefer tall spouses, and height is correlated in some way with how long you live, this would also inflate estimates of life span heritability.
Calico Life Sciences is an Alphabet/Google company.
Also at Business Insider.
Estimates of the Heritability of Human Longevity Are Substantially Inflated due to Assortative Mating (open, DOI: 10.1534/genetics.118.301613) (DX)
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Friday November 09 2018, @03:40AM (16 children)
Add in a whole bunch of "not".
No to excessive indulgence in alcohol - or any other drugs.
No to driving like a madman.
No to texting and drivinig (which is redundant, after the last one).
No to foolish risk taking (as in, "Hold my beer!)
Everyday decisions have more to do with longevity, than anything else. When anyone starts measuring longevity, they necessarily dismiss the most foolish decision makers, and start with people who are at least moderately responsible. It only takes a momentary distraction to eliminate your self from the pool of long lived people.
This is one of the contributing reasons that women outlive men. Guys spend most of their lives doing stupid shit. Women manage to jump into a lot fewer idiot situations that might be life threatening. Except for drugs, maybe.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 09 2018, @03:49AM (6 children)
Wait, did you just admit that men and women have different tendencies? That sounds suspiciously like you're saying that the brain is a gendered organ.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 09 2018, @03:59AM (1 child)
It is only gendered because it is plastic. Experience from the youngest age, even the womb, shapes the synapses.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday November 09 2018, @05:18PM
That's not an unreasonable assumption, but it needs proof. Proof is lacking, and there is a small amount of evidence that suggests that external environment is not solely responsible for the differences. Sufficient evidence that that should be the default assumption until proof is available. As to what the differences are...the evidence is equivocal is you discount things like the different ways that hormones cycle between the two sexes. (And they cycle in both sexes. Women just tend to have more readily observable differences. It's not clear that the emotional cycles are less intense in one sex than the other. One could map accidents vs time to see, but without a readily observable base line this is difficult.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday November 09 2018, @03:59AM (3 children)
No need to be suspicious. My brain is indirectly connected to a penis. The wife's brain is indirectly connected to a uterus. My brain has been bathed in a special blend of hormones and stuff for most of my life. Her brain has been bathed in a completely different blend of hormones and stuff for most of her life. Anyone who expects our two brains to be the same doesn't understand life at all.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday November 09 2018, @04:18AM (2 children)
Whose?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday November 09 2018, @04:56AM (1 child)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 09 2018, @07:19AM
What's that, precious?
(Score: 2) by legont on Friday November 09 2018, @03:53AM
I agree; mostly. I think though that some rather dangerous activities such as skiing, biking, mountain hiking and so on increase life span; if done by otherwise responsible folks that is. The reason might be that they prepare us to overcome challenges.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday November 09 2018, @04:13AM (5 children)
(don't get it. How's "hold my beer" a foolish risk taking?)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday November 09 2018, @04:58AM (4 children)
We have educational channels [reddit.com] on the internet to fully explain that. Please use your favorite search engine next time.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday November 09 2018, @07:15AM (3 children)
altavista.com is no longer.
Noice. You used them?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday November 09 2018, @12:29PM (2 children)
Indeed, who knew that sliding down 4 stories of handrails at once would hurt? Who knew that it would be hard to hold a beer while water surfing barefoot or that improperly executed backflips can involve landing on one's head? Who knew? These archives of knowledge are quite useful in the hands of someone who would better serve as beer holder than doer of deeds.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday November 09 2018, @12:42PM (1 child)
Well, to be sincere, every time I asked a friend to hold my beer it was about making room for some more by releasing the one processed in the last stages by my kidney. Never associated taking a leak with a risky behaviour.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2, Funny) by khallow on Friday November 09 2018, @02:18PM
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Friday November 09 2018, @07:34AM (1 child)
Doesn't make that all other points redundant?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday November 09 2018, @08:52AM
In the full context, it has something to do with a beer, so I guess it doesn't make redundant the non-beer-related risks.
(grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford