Shorter Height = Longer Life?
by Matt
Maybe being short is not such a bad thing? What if the same gene that caused you to be short gave you a longer life? New studies now show that this mutation has been proven true in women.
Researchers have studied the genes of Ashkenazi Jews because of their uniform like structure, and have found that there is a mutation that causes shorter height in women along with longer lives. The study was of the insulin-like growth factor (IGF-I) which is regulated by human growth hormone. IGF-I is extremely important to children in their early growth stages. Scientist studied animal IGF-I and found that mutations in the genes led to shorter animals with longer lives.
In order to see if this mutation had the same affect on humans, scientists studied genetic variations in Ashkenazi Jewish centenarians. In order to get other views on the genetic variation scientist also examined the children of the centenarians and a group of Ashkenazi Jews with no family history of extended lifetimes. The IGF-I plasma levels were higher in the children of the centenarians than in the control group (Ashkenazi Jews with no history of longevity). These daughters were also shorter than the young girls in the control group. Dr. Nir Barzilai, the senior author in the study and director of the Institute for Aging Research at Einstein said,
Our findings suggest that, by interfering with IGF-I signaling, these gene mutations somehow play a role in extending the human life span, as they do in many other organisms.
Currently there is a drug being tested that would reduce IGF-I action in the body. The drug is being tested to treat cancer but could be helpful to reduce aging. Dr. Brazilai spoke on this and said,
Since the subjects in our study have been exposed to their mutations since conception, it is not clear whether people would need such a therapy throughout life or if it could help people who received it at a later time.
What are some other ways genetic mutations have a positive effect on people? What are negative ways?
March 24th, 2008 at 8:20 pm
First of all I hope everybody had a good spring break!
This is a really interesting post Matt! My mom is actually quite short, about 5′0″, so I guess she might live longer.
But some negative genetic mutations effects are involving diseases such as cystic fibrosis and various types of cancer. Those diseases and many others can be more severe than they normally would be if a mutation in the gene causing them occurs.
More diseases and effects are listed on here: http://sloppynoodle.com/integen.html
Another pretty interesting article I found, http://www.genome.gov/16015415, talks about how mutations can cause ovarian and breast cancers. It brings up the fact that women with these diseases can be discriminated against in the work place. It is interesting to think biological factors that we really don’t have much control over can affect the everyday life.
March 26th, 2008 at 8:03 am
Thats a really intereting study! I never knew that your height could be linked to your lifespan. This is also interesting to me because I remember that the worlds tallest man died in his twenties. Im not sure if this has anything to do with this article but it might. Here is a site that I found that talks about how some people have a genetic mutation that does not allow them to get HIV aids
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/11/031120074728.htm
It is nice to think that not all mutations are bad!
March 26th, 2008 at 6:41 pm
This is an awesome blog post, but it is very hard to find positive genetic mutations that don’t also have a negative effect:
One example is sickle cell anemia which is a horrible mutation but in certain circumstances it prevents malaria.
http://www.volconvo.com/forums/science-technology/4549-positive-genetic-mutations-humans.html
An example of a negative mutation is cystic fibrosis which cripples children and leads to early death. It damages the lungs, digestive organs and, in the male, the vas differences (spermatic duct).
http://www.christiananswers.net/q-eden/genetic-mutations.html
I think this blog brought up a really interesting point that not every thing that sounds bad is always terrible. For example mutations that sound pretty bad can also protect you from a disease that kills hundreds of people in 3rd world countries.
March 26th, 2008 at 10:30 pm
I decided to look up negative gene mutations first to answer Matt’s question and so many sites popped up it was mind boggling which one to choose. But, I did find a few that were interesting and sad at the same time. Colorectal cancer is a mutation in the cells that line the colon or the rectum to become abnormal and grow out of control. Sickle cell anemia has negative impacts on us as humans but it is put forward as an example of evolution and provided a great test for future experiments. This website explains mutations a bit more thoroughly so yall should check it out! Great post Matt
March 27th, 2008 at 5:01 pm
In agreement with Taylor, this post was quite interesting and the first time i’d ever heard anything like this before. I found an article about people in China exposed to smoke, coal etc. inside their homes may carry genetic mutations which could increase their likelihood of developing lung cancer.
http://burningissues.org/car-www/medical_effects/immune-disease/genetic-mutation-coal-china.htm This would be an example of a negative effect regarding genetic mutations on people.
Also I found another article that talks about poeple with Schizophrenia, which is caused by genetic mutations that disrupt the function of the brain while it develops. http://www.turkishpress.com/news.asp?id=222661&s=&i=&t=Schizophrenics_have_unique_genetic_mutations:_study
Also, hopefully the drug you mentioned in this blog can work in help to reduce aging in people, but more importantly help treat cancer!
March 27th, 2008 at 7:38 pm
That is amazing, well for short people, it didnt have me jumping out of my seat though.
What Taylor brought up though is a little discouranging. I do have a question though. are the genetic mutations that cause diseases the same mutations that make someone short? or live long? or both?
I found a great article, it says that this genetic mutation discovery can possibly help scientists develop anit aging drugs and drugs that can prevent and possibly cure age related diseases. here is the article:
http://www.dancewithshadows.com/society/short-live-long.asp
Dr Nir Barzilai wrote, “We found that people of a hundred years old have mutations in a gene that is related to the growth hormone pathway. We think this is important, because that’s what now happens in nature. The pony lives longer than the horse, the small dog lives longer than a large dog. Apparently, it’s true for humans also.”
March 28th, 2008 at 9:37 am
I decided to research some positive effects of genetic mutations. This link had a couple of good examples: http://www.gate.net/~rwms/EvoMutations.html
Genetic mutations and variations can at times increase an organism’s chance of survival. E. Coli strands were shown to mutate to higher and lower temperatures. They became more fit than the ancestor population even though they were exposed to different temperatures. Chlamydomonas, a green algae that does photosynthesis in the light. They were, however, slightly capable of doing photosynthesis in the dark using acetate. Some strands grew well in the dark while others did not have as good of luck. Over time however, their genes mutated so that they could survive in the dark.
March 28th, 2008 at 11:02 am
If it has a main effect on woman, then wouldn’t it be on the gene that determines your gender, and not the gene that determines your height?
This website talks about some of the adaptations that some organisms have made and some of the genetic mutations that proved beneficial and advantageous. http://www.gate.net/~rwms/EvoMutations.html
March 29th, 2008 at 9:14 pm
YESSSS!
im going to live forever, hahahahah
March 30th, 2008 at 5:06 pm
Some genetic mutations have a positive effect and some have a negative effect. Some ways that genetic mutations have a positive effect on you are a shorter height may cause a longer live and a bigger foot usually causes a taller person.
Some genetic mutations have a negative effect on you. One is cancer. Another is diabetes. Another is asthma. Cancer is a severe mutations that usually causes you to die. Diabetes does not allow you to do any many things as you may want to. Asthma which I have, can not allow you to run or exercise as much as you want to.
March 31st, 2008 at 9:16 am
When i was searching positive mutation results i found an incredible article about the speciation of butterflies. It proved that a species of butterflies in asia were infact extremely closely related, but still not quite the same. It proved that when they were geographiclly seperated their phsyical appearance was infact almost the same in colors and a common stripe they shared. But when the two species were living closely in the same area the outer appearance would infact CHANGE in order to determine differences among species so that they wouldn’t mate. The article states that they CAN infact mate, but that the offspring usually are weaker and can’t survive. So natural selection helps out! “This pattern would therefore support the interpretation that it was brought about by reinforcement, hence natural selection.” Although this is relatively off subject I found it to be really really interesting, and it displays positive effects of natures mutations.
March 31st, 2008 at 9:16 am
Oh, and incase anybody wants to see the article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4708459.stm
March 31st, 2008 at 10:51 am
I di d some research and found the sequence in whch DNA is altered Her it is:
Deletion
Here, certain nucleotides are deleted, which affects the coding of proteins that use this DNA sequence. If for example, a gene coded for alanine, with a genetic sequence of C-G-G, and the cytosine nucleotide was deleted, then the alanine amino acid would not be able to be created, and any other amino acids that are supposed to be coded from this DNA sequence will also be unable to be produced because each successive nucleotide after the deleted nucleotide will be out of place.
Insertion
Similar to the effects of deletion, where a nucleotide is inserted into a genetic sequence and therefore alters the chain thereafter. This alteration of a nucleotide sequence is known as frameshift
Inversion
Where a particular nucleotide sequence is reversed, and is not as serious as the above mutations. This is because the nucleotides that have been reversed in order only affect a small portion of the sequence at large
Substitution
A certain nucleotide is replaced with another, which will affect any amino acid to be synthesised from this sequence due to this change. If the gene is essential, i.e. for the coding of haemoglobin then the effects are serious, and organisms in this instance suffer from a condition called sickle cell anaemia.
Website:
http://www.biology-online.org/2/8_mutations.htm
March 31st, 2008 at 12:15 pm
Taylor, my mom is also short, so I’m hoping she will live longer too. Soem positive effects of genetic mutations were the one we talked about in class about the sickle cell and how it can stop some diseases, such as malaria, if you are only a carrier. In order to have sickle cell anemia, you must be homozygote recessive to have the disease. This means that carriers have a better life because they are not able to get malaria. The only downside to this is that if you marry someone else that has sickle cell then they will have a better chance of having a child with sickle cell anemia. A negative mutation would be Turner syndrome or Downs syndrome.
Good post Matt!
March 31st, 2008 at 7:50 pm
I am glad to know that being short is not such a bad thing after all. But this has just been proven in women hasn’t it? Are scientists currently doing a study on men to see if it could be the same. I know there are many negative mutations like the ones Taylor was talking about, but there are also many positive genetic mutations. About 10 percent of Europeans have a mutation that disables a protein the Human Immunodeficiency Virus
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/11/031120074728.htm
March 31st, 2008 at 9:23 pm
Nice post, Matt. This is good for my mom because she also is short. I have a question though, does this only apply to women?
Genetic mutations can have positive and negative affects on people. Some even link to breast and ovarian cancer for women. We must be careful because as we think we are making advancements in the medical field, by treating cancer and reducing aging, but at the same time they have negative side affects which create a whole other set of problems. the link to the breast and ovarian cancer page is: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/12/011217082802.htm
However, I realize that there are positive mutations, however its pretty hard to find ones that don’t have negative side affects. The closest positive mutations i found with not too bad of side affects were sickle cell anemia which makes it so you cannot get malaria, but the obvious bad effect is the sickle cell anemia disease. The other was Hypermobility or double jointedness but i have found that has negative effects as well.
March 31st, 2008 at 9:59 pm
First off, here’s a website that talks about kids with a certain mutation and their families, and how some actually showed clear signs of depression upon receiving information that they were.
http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=14442487
This website has some “duhh” moments i it-it talks about people who have been informed that they were genetically at risk for breast cancer, and people that have been treated and survived it and the psychological effects of all the groups.
http://www.health.state.ny.us/nysdoh/cancer/obcancer/append4.htm’
So, people like Superman are good. If people had that type of genetic mutation, in that situation, it’d be great.
Take someone with Cerebral Palsy for instance, and that’s a bad story, for the person with it, and the one who always has to wheel around the person with it-I mean, really, everybody has to stare at those guys, 24/7. Next to that, in reference to the websites above, some families with people in them with a bad genetic mutation have shown direct signs of depression.
April 1st, 2008 at 8:18 pm
Thanks sooo much for posting this blog post!! It was really interesting, but also my sister is short and always complaining about it. The possibility that it could extend her lifespan would really make her feel better.
I remember a blog post done earlier in the year about mutations and how they could have positive and negative effects, like thumbs for a panda. Also, some mutations can have both a negative effect and a positive one, like sickle cell disease. It makes you immune to malaria, but also makes you tired and sometimes in pain. Some genetic mutations that have positive effects are lactose tolerance and immunity to HIV (courtesy of a mutant CCR5 allele). Looking at that second website Taylor found, the mutations of BRCA1 and BRCA2 can cause ovarian and/or breast cancer, but it won’t always result in this, and the chance that you will actually inherit these mutations is less than 2%. It also said that women more likely to inherit these mutations are actually Ashkenazi Jewish women, the same women in the post who are shorter with longer lives.
I found this article posted a few years ago that said that hot dogs may cause genetic mutations that boost your risk for colon cancer.
http://www.livescience.com/health/060814_hot_dogs.html
Great post Matt!! It really shows that mutations are not always bad, and mutations that some people think are 100% bad can have some good points as well!!
April 1st, 2008 at 9:31 pm
I found out that the short height long lifespan gene has been named the “Methuselah”. They have placed this gene in roundworms so then the worms would live from 30% to 50% longer than their normal lifespan. Could this be the start to the end of death?
Information from http://www.newsweek.com/id/119771.
April 3rd, 2008 at 3:29 pm
My sister is pretty short, so I suppose if she does have this mutation it would be good for her if she lived longer. Although there are some helpful mutations, most that we hear about are harmful (I read earlier in the year on a blog post that most mutations are actually neither helpful nor harmful, they don’t affect us). One mutation that has both a positive effect and a negative one on people is the sickle cell mutation. It does cause sickle cell anemia to occur in humans, but it also prevents people from getting malaria from mosquitoes.
Another interesting mutation with positive effects is hypermobility, or double jointedness. It allows you to move your hands in cool contortionist ways, and also is said to decrease the risk of osteoarthritis in hands if that is where you are double jointed. This is a new finding contrary to the opposite belief before that thought hypermobility CAUSED arthritis.
http://www.allaboutarthritis.com/AllAboutArthritis/layoutTemplates/html/en/contentdisplay/document/condition/arthritis/generalNews/double_joint_arthritis.htm
That article that Taylor found on ovarian and breast cancer due to genetic mutations of BRCA-1 and BRCA-2 (which normally control cell growth) was really interesting. It stated that the Ashkenazi Jewish women were at a greater risk for inheriting this mutation if they had a first or second degree relative with ovarian/breast cancer. I also have noticed how people who have certain problems from mutations are discriminated against, and I think that’s horrible because they have no control over it. On the other website she found, I saw a disease called hypercholesterolemia, which caused high blood levels of cholesterol, and it is caused by a genetic mutation on chromosome 19.
Great post Matt!!! I always seem to learn tons of new information about mutations everytime I hear about them!! By the way Rose, I’m glad you will live forever; maybe you can help other future generations clean up our planet
April 3rd, 2008 at 5:37 pm
Thats interesting short people don’t just have an advantage for long life but in my research I found that they have faster reaction times, greater ability to accelerate body movements, stronger muscles in proportion to body weight, greater endurance, and the ability to rotate the body faster. Short people also are less likely to break bones causing them to excel at sports more than those of a taller sort. http://www.shortsupport.org/Research/samaras.html
This also explains why I break many bone! Sad!
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:15 pm
As soon as I read the title it appealed to me right away. I actually always wanted to be taller but after reading this, I’m glad being short is not bad. Especially if i can have a longer life! It is so great that there are constant new discoveries on ways mutiliations can be positive. Just a few weeks ago we learned about the mutilation of having sickle cell and help from getting the measles. The negative effects is that personally I have short legs so sometimes in long distance running, other competitors with much longer legs can take one stride and get ahead of me. Then, I have to use more engergy to take more strides to catch up.
Morgan,
Your comment is also related to the fact why many successful gymnasts who must have “faster reaction times, greater ability to accelerate body movements, stronger muscles in proportion to body weight, greater endurance, and the ability to rotate the body faster” are short. I also like the website too, it actually gave me a little bit of a confidence boost and proud to be short.
April 7th, 2008 at 7:06 pm
This is a great post Matt! It’s a really interesting study that I would never guess to be true. I would ask the same question that has been brought up many times about how it affects the females and not the males. Someone brought up the connection it has to breast cancer and ovarian cancer. That’s really captivating about what Hank said talking about the tallest man. I found a website on him. It talks about his stats and what age he died at, which was 22.
http://www.worldslargestthings.com/easterntour/wadlow.htm
April 8th, 2008 at 8:02 pm
I am what most people would call a “short person” sing as how I am in the ninth grade and I am only 5′ 1″. I have been considered short my whole life and it used to bug me really badly, but then I realized that this is the hight that God wants me to be. David (a biblical figure) was merely 5′ 4″ and he killed a ten foot giant. It proves the saying ‘Big things come in small packages.’ I guess this is another reason to enjoy being the hight I am.
I wonder if the ’short height=longer life’ also applies to migets and dwarves. Migets and dwarves are born short (event though it is usually a medical or genetic malfunction that makes a person not grow properly (link with definition: http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/pituitary+dwarfism). The most typical type of dwarfism is Achondroplasia (link: http://www.geneclinics.org/profiles/achondroplasia/details.html). So if someone is born with genetics to not grow like normal, would they also live longer?
I can also see where shorter people can live longer lives, because the taller you are the harder your heart has to work to get the blood to all the areas of your body, if you are shorter, your heart can pump the blood and get it to the areas of the body more quickly. So the taller person’s heart will over work itself, making it wear out faster.
April 11th, 2008 at 8:22 pm
Oh my god, i hope to live over the 100years old. Will, i jealous your short height. Ha Ha! Just kidding..
Anyway my parents aren`t tall. But my brother and my pretty tall. I think that my grandfather pretty tall. So, i am not short. But, i was really supriesed to this story. I thought that tall people are more longer life. So, i disappiontment from this story.
Anyway this is really interesting story to me. But this is just statistical news. Maybe this story is expected to me. Why? i should live in 100years old(Ha Ha!). Matt! this is interesting story thanks.
April 12th, 2008 at 8:44 am
Wow this post is receiving alot of attention. I guess a lot of people are interested in living longer.
Lauren, I think your hypothesis about the heart having to work much faster in a tall person to pump the blood to all the parts in the body may explains most of why the tallest man in the world died at 22 like meredith and Hank were wondering.
I also found a response article about shorter women living longer. The author, Mary Carmichael, is also 5 2″!
http://www.newsweek.com/id/119771
April 13th, 2008 at 10:20 pm
Grant,
To answer your question this study only applies to females. It is possible that in males shorter height may be linked to longer life or other traits in males but that was not studied in this study. I too was wondering if it could apply to males because at only 5′ 8″ I am no Shaq. Remember being taller requires your heart to work harder like Lauren said. It is the same thing as if you were obese. There is so much more for your body to have to account for and pump blood to that it wears out faster. There was a program I was watching on TV about Asian men who wear close to eight feet tall. They actually had a genetic disorder refered to as “giantism”. It is were your brain can not stop your body’s growth. There are advantages and disadvantages to both being tall and short but the best way to ensure longer life is to eat well, exercise, and get adequate sleep (9 1/4 hours).