Scientists have finally figured out how the Greenland shark lives to be almost 400 years old, and the secret is in its DNA.
Scientists may finally understand how the Greenland shark lives for 400 years. While not exactly that spectacular looking of a creature, the Greenland shark makes up for its hulking frame, sandpapery skin, and awkward fins by living for up to 400 years in the depths of the Arctic and North Atlantic oceans. For years, scientists have been unsure exactly how this shark—with its cloudy and parasite-ridden eyes—manages to live so long.
That is roughly twice as many as humans possess, and it makes them the holder of the biggest genome seen in any shark sequences so far. What is especially interesting, too, is thta a large portion of the genome is composed of repeating genes. These repeating genes are what we call jumping genes or transposable elements. They insert themselves into other genes and then self-replicate through a mechanism similar to copying and pasting a paragraph of text in a document.
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