Beaver and Naked Mole Rat Genomes Reveal Common Paths to Longevity.

ABSTRACT: Long-lived rodents have become an attractive model for the studies on aging. To understand evolutionary paths to long life, we prepare chromosome-level genome assemblies of the two longest-lived rodents, Canadian beaver (Castor canadensis) and naked mole rat (NMR, Heterocephalus glaber), which were scaffolded with in vitro proximity ligation and chromosome conformation capture data and complemented with long-read sequencing. Our comparative genomic analyses reveal that amino acid substitutions at "disease-causing" sites are widespread in the rodent genomes and that identical substitutions in long-lived rodents are associated with common adaptive phenotypes, e.g., enhanced resistance to DNA damage and cellular stress. By employing a newly developed substitution model and likelihood ratio te

SUBMITTER: Zhou X 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9385191 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature