Discovering the secret to a long and healthy life has always intrigued humanity — you need look no further than the nearest magazine rack to see that that fascination is today alive and well. And now scientists have some new hints, thanks to blood samples from one of the longest-lived humans yet to walk this Earth: Hendrikje van Andel-Schipper, who was 115 when she died in 2005. A new genetic analysis of blood and tissue samples collected during her autopsy indicates that life's outer limits might be set by our cells' finite ability to divide.
We are born with up to 20,000 hematopoietic stem cells — cells that give rise to new blood cells — that self-renew in our body every 25 to 50 weeks by dividing creating two daughter cells. These cells differentiate to generate the various types of blood cells in our bodies. About 1,300 of those hematopoietic ...
