#477 The Science of Longevity Genes: What We’ve Learned from Centenarians - Dr Tyler Panzner

Tyler Panzner (0:00)

There's got to be a certain tipping point. Once you hit a certain age, it's like if those cancers haven't begun forming yet, the telomeres can possibly limit how much they can grow. But then you also got to think about some cancers can actually get a mutated telomerase enzyme and they can actually add the telomeres back on. But I feel like most of these super sleepers you hear about, they're like functioning completely normal, just literally on two to four hours of sleep.

Siim Land (0:23)

Tyler, welcome back to the show.

Tyler Panzner (0:25)

Thanks so much for having me on again. Excited to dig in.

Siim Land (0:30)

Yeah, a lot of people were very interested in our last episode where you shared about how genetics influences, how people react to different supplements, popular supplements out there, and even like common foods. So yeah, I wanted to do a follow up to discuss these things further. But before we schedule that, we also agree that we're going to talk about one particular study that came out recently, which was quite interesting. It was on the longest living woman at that time, and she passed away, and they did a study on her before she passed away at the age of 117 So there was quite interesting findings from that study that they discovered about her genetics. So we'll discuss a little bit about it. So what was your overall impression of that particular study?

Tyler Panzner (1:23)

Yeah, I mean, it was really interesting. I think it first makes sense to kind of touch on the whole multi-omics aspect of it, right? So for you listening that aren't aware, omics are studies of different, I guess we could call them layers of biology, genomics or genetics, right? That's what I'm a specialist in, but I'll be the first to admit as much as I love it, right? It's just one piece of the puzzle, right? We have things like transcriptomics or epigenetics, which can see how much of these genes are you making, but we know we turn genes into proteins, so there's proteomics. What type of proteins are actually being made? There's things like even exposomics, right? That was the one they actually didn't do in that study, where it's really focusing on different environmental exposures and things. So it's really layering on all these. I like to think of them as chapters of a book, right? That layer on top of each other.

It was pretty interesting how she wasn't universally like young all around with all these different measurements, right? It's kind of the overall net effect of these individually smaller parts.

Siim Land (2:31)

Yeah. Yeah, that she had some good genetics of the genes that are associated with longevity, but she also had some genes that were associated with shorter longevity and increased cancer. But, you know, she still lived a very long time. So there's, you know, because in a lot of these cases, it's also luck, you know, when you're where you're born, what kind of environment you're in, and, you know, whether you get hit by a car or something like that. There's a lot of luck as well.

Tyler Panzner (2:59)

Well, I wonder how many sanitarians, right? Like super longevity people, you know, end up having their life cut short exactly due to the bad luck, right? How many do we lose the car accidents that could otherwise be in that discussion?

Siim Land (3:12)

Yeah, but yeah, one of the biggest surprising things, I think, in the study was telomeres. So she actually had short telomeres, which telomeres are thought to be, I guess, markers of longevity, and that you need to have long telomeres to live longer, etc. But she actually had quite short telomeres. So what do you think about that?

Tyler Panzner (3:36)

Yeah, I mean, it's interesting when you think of it in terms of, like, we think of it in terms of, you know, regular aging, right? Like, the little, like, the ticking time bombs, like, the fuse for our cells. Each replication gets a little shorter and shorter, but we also need to think about, in the context of someone that's a lot older, right? We need to think in terms of cancer, right? So as these telomeres are really eroded, the cells at that point aren't going to be replicating too much, but that can also apply to cancer cells themselves, right? So the things that may have made her seem not as longevity-centric, right, for the telomeres could be the same thing that starve off cancer. You know, I feel like there's got to be a certain tipping point, right? Once you hit a certain age, it's like if those cancers haven't begun forming yet, the telomeres can possibly limit how much they can grow. But then you also got to think about some cancers can actually get a mutated telomerase enzyme and they can actually add the telomeres back on, right? So going back to the luck thing, it's like perhaps maybe the mutations that she acquired, right? We're all acquiring mutations and, you know, you could say forming little cancers, right? All the time. But if they didn't add on that telomerase, right? They're not going to be able to grow that much because just like the healthy cells in the body, that fuse is very, very short and eroded.