Why do common shrews live for only two years, while bowhead whales survive for two centuries? And could the answer give us hints as to how to extend our own, human life spans?
The maximum life span of each species is estimated using the age of its longest-living member, and these vary by orders of magnitude among mammals. Now, scientists propose that "epigenetics" could at least partly explain these differences. They initially posted their findings in November 2023 to the preprint database bioRxiv, and on Friday (June 7), the study was published in the journal Science Advances.
