James Clement, professed citizen-scientist, founder of a company advised by the Harvard geneticist George Church, has been searching the globe over a 6 year period to find supercentenarians who would be willing to contribute their precious genomes to a rare scientific cache, such as Clarence Matthews who reached 110 before passing away
last year saying, “hope you find something that does someone some good”.
Individuals who live beyond 100 into a 12 th decade, referred to as supercentenarians, rarely faced
protracted illness or disabilities before they pass away, many of which have attributed this good fortune
to personal habits. This is not common in the growing populous of centenarians, individuals aged 100 to
110, and nonagenarians, individuals aged 90 to 99.
Shelby Harris lived to be 111 said he “tries to live the truth”. He threw the 1 st pitch in a local baseball
game a few months before he passed away in 2012. Emma Morano of Verbania, Italy who reached 117
was still cooking her own pasta, and recommended “raw eggs and no husband” up until she passed
away a few months ago.
Even though they both would like to have said the secret to their exceptionally long and healthy life was
due to their lifestyles and habits alone, they both agreed to and donated their DNA to a private effort in
order to help find the secrets contained hidden in their exceedingly rare supercentenarian genes.
A nonprofit called Betterhumans are making available to any researcher who would like to also study
the full genetic sequences of Ms. Morano, Ms. Michelson, and Mr. Harris along with 3 dozen genomes of
other supercentenarians from Caribbean, European, and North America. Additional genomes from
individuals who passed away at 107, 108, and 109 were added that had uncommon patterns in their 3
billion pairs of A’s, C’s, G’s, and T’s, that are the nucleobases that make up all genomes, which may be
shown to have helped in extending their lives as well as protecting their health. It is possible that a drug
or gene therapy may be devised to replicate these desired effects in the rest of the populous.
This is the largest cache of the exceedingly rare supercentenarian genomes to be sequenced and made
public as of yet. It comes as studies of longevity that have yielded a few solid clues on healthy aging. It
would seem that luck and lifestyle still factor heavily as to why individuals live on into their 90s and
100s. Mr. Clement found 2,500 differences between supercentenarian DNA and those of controls. As to
the extent that they have a genetic advantage, it would appear to partly come from having the good
fortune to inherit fewer than normal DNA variations that are known to raise the risks of developing
Alzheimer’s, heart disease, and other afflictions that affect health and longevity. Some researchers say
the findings are not enough, that rather than winning the lottery with better than usual DNA variations
which are less bad they suggest that supercentenarians may possibly possess genetic code that actively
protects them from aging.
The effort has been challenged in part by the difficulty of acquiring the rare DNA, and as a group of
leading longevity researchers have put in an academic paper. The usefulness of such a small group for
genetic study is unclear. Narrowing in on which variations affect which phenotypes requires the
statistical power of tens of thousands of DNA samples. The verified number of supercentenarians world
wide is only 150. Amateur genealogists estimate the number to be at 1000. Researchers hope that
despite the limited number it will be possible to find the secrets hidden in the genomes of
supercentenarians extreme phenotype. Research largely has been limited to animal studies in the
scientific mainstream laboratories around the world. Problem being that works in shorter lived
organisms often doesn’t translate to humans. Despite limitations prominent researchers are showing
interest.
