Life Span in Bees

An article from The Age notes research into the biochemistry of bee life spans: "The common worker bee lives just six weeks, but if the same egg was raised as a queen bee, the queen can live for up to six years. La Trobe University's David Vaux is a specialist in apoptosis, the science of how cells die. His research aims to unlock the answers to the queen bee's 50-fold increased lifespan. ... the only actively dividing or replicating cells in queen bees were the ovaries, suggesting that all the other cells in the queen were long-lived. The finding suggested that queen bees possess a cellular maintenance system that is not switched on in the worker bees." Greater repair of cellular damage should lead to longer life spans; the final results will no doubt be interesting, but most likely not directly relevant to human longevity. Researchers have learned a great deal about aging from flies and yeast, however, so we shall see.

Link: http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/an-ageold-question-will-wax-slow-wane/2006/08/13/1155407670358.html

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