Is the fountain of youth… filled with naked mole-rats?
This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science.
For ages, we’ve been slathering creams and botox on our wrinkles. But naked mole-rats? They stay smooth while living ten times longer than lab mice! How?!
Yu Chen’s team at Tongji University in Shanghai DUG in.
They found a special protein that spots broken DNA and patches it up. All animals have it – even us! But in naked mole-rats, just four tiny tweaks make their version better at patching DNA damage.
Swap those into human or mouse cells? They repair like mole-rats, delaying aging. For example, grey hairs in mice? Halved!
Maybe someday we’ll trade crow’s feet… for mole-rat glow!
Reference: Chen, Y., Chen, Z., Wang, H., Cui, Z., Li, K. L., Song, Z., … & Mao, Z. (2025). A cGAS-mediated mechanism in naked mole-rats potentiates DNA repair and delays aging. Science, 390(6769), eadp5056.