The “fountain of youth” seems to be one step closer, after scientists have discovered that certain genetic combos give long life to either beetles which have sex or those that don’t. In its study, an international team, including Asian-origin Tejashwari Meerupati of Uppsala University in Sweden, has uncovered that a small set of genes in mitochondria passed only from mothers to offspring, plays a more dynamic role in predicting life expectancies than ever previously anticipated.
The research discovered that particular mitochondrial haplotypes (mitochondria is a membrane-enclosed organelle in eukaryotic cells) were linked to life expectancies of females in the beetle species Callosobruchus maculatus.