Greenland sharks live up to 400 years, new discovery may explain why

A Greenland shark individual

photo: guide to greenland

On the surface, the Greenland shark looks ugly, with its huge body, oddly arranged fins, and opaque eyes filled with parasites as it slowly moves through the depths of the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans.

However, this shark species possesses outstanding abilities: it can live up to 400 years.

Now, an international team of scientists from Europe and the US has successfully mapped the genetic makeup of the Greenland shark, opening up the opportunity for scientists to study the mystery surrounding their remarkable longevity.

"Any effort to study the mechanisms behind the super-longevity of these animals will eventually require genetic mapping," The New York Times quoted the team leader, computational biologist Steve Hoffmann of the Leibniz Institute for Gerontology and Friedrich Schiller University in Jena (Germany), as saying on September 22.

The new report, posted on the bioRxiv portal, provides a comprehensive assembly of the Greenland shark's genetic code.

Scientists discovered that the Greenland shark possesses a huge genetic mass: about 6.5 billion DNA base pairs, twice as much as humans, and is the animal with the largest genetic mass of any shark species sequenced to date.

Through this, the researchers found special genes and biological mechanisms, including a network of duplicated genes related to DNA editing capacity, which may be the reason for this fish's longevity.

Source: https://thanhnien.vn/ca-map-greenland-song-den-400-nam-kham-pha-moi-co-the-giai-thich-tai-sao-185240923101531563.htm