Rockfish: Long-Lived Animals with "Negligible Senescence"
John C. Guerin
Centenarian Species and Rockfish Project
Field observations have suggested for quite some time
that certain fish, turtles and invertebrates have
extremely long maximum lifespan potential. Age
validation techniques have since confirmed these
observations. Negligible senescence is defined in
part as no observable age-related increase in
mortality rate or decrease in reproduction rate after
maturity, and no observable age-related decline in
physiological capacity or disease resistance.
Recent data compiled on rockfish (genus Sebastes) have
documented ages exceeding 200 years but also many
species under 30 years maximum observed lifespan,
raising the intriguing possibility of intra-species
lifespan comparison. The Centenarian Species and
Rockfish Project has 14 total pilot studies. The
three studies reported in this poster are: "Rockfish
liver microarrays using existing 16,000+ zebrafish
gene chips", a collaboration between Glenn S. Gerhard,
Dartmouth Medical Center, and Renee Malek, TIGR (The
Institute for Genomic Research); "Heat Shock Protein
comparison between younger and older rockfish",
Marcelle Morrison-Bogorad, Associate Director,
Neuroscience and Neuropsychology of Aging Program,
NIA; and "Electron transport abnormalities and
mitochondrial DNA mutations in rockfish heart tissue",
Judd Aiken, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
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