Abstract
The variety of lifespans of different organisms in nature is amazing. Although it is acknowledged that the longevity is determined by a complex interaction between hereditary and environmental factors, many questions about factors defining lifespan remain open. One of them concerns a wide range of lifespans of different organisms. The reason for the longevity of certain trees, which reaches a thousand years and exceeds the lifespan of most long living vertebrates by a huge margin is also not completely understood. Here we have discussed some distinguishing characteristics of plants, which may explain their remarkable longevity. Among them are the absence (or very low abundance) of intracellular inclusions composed of amyloidogenic proteins, the lack of certain groups of proteins prone to aggregate and form amyloids in animals, and the high level of compounds which inhibit protein aggregation and possess antiaging properties.
Highlights
IntroductionThe longevity of certain vertebrate animals and especially woody trees has long fascinated scientists and the general public
Species Diversity in Maximal LongevityThe longevity of certain vertebrate animals and especially woody trees has long fascinated scientists and the general public
Since synucleins are highly expressed in vertebrates, but their genes are absent in plants, including long-lived plants, we questioned what the structure was for an organism with an unusually high lifespan, i.e., the longest living rodent naked mole rat [2,3,4,5]
Summary
The longevity of certain vertebrate animals and especially woody trees has long fascinated scientists and the general public. The maximum longevity of different species can vary by 100-fold in mammals and by 1000-fold or sometimes even more if we include in the list the lifespan of invertebrates and mammals [1]. On one end of the spectrum are small and short-lived vertebrates, on the other end are the large and long-lived animals (Figure 1B). We can add to the list of the shortest-lived organisms a vertebrate killifish with a lifespan of about four months and include the bowhead whale to the list of the longest-living mammals at 200 years. Biology 2019, 8, 43 of Madagascar Adansonia rubrostipa (fony baobab, Figure 1C,D), according to the radiocarbon probing of the oldest sample, is 1,136 ± 16 BP [7].
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