Minimal cell experiments (making cells with as small a genome as possible) have already been done successfully. This presumably removes transposons, and I have not heard that such cells had abnormally long lifespans.
The minimal cell experiments were done with mycoplasma, which (as far as I know) does not age. More generally, as I understand it, most bacteria don’t age, at least not in any sense similar to animals.
Also, I expect wild-type mycoplasma already had no transposons in its genome, since the organism evolved under very heavy evolutionary pressure for a small genome. (That’s why it was chosen for the minimal cell experiments.)
An initial search doesn’t confirm whether or not mycoplasma age. Bacteria do age though; even seemingly-symmetrical divisions yield one “parent” bacterium that ages and dies.
If mycoplasma genuinely don’t, that would be fascinating and potentially yield valuable clues on the aging mechanism.
Oh wow, that’s really neat. I doubt that it has any relevance to the aging mechanisms of multicellular organisms, but very cool in its own right. And definitely not transposon-mediated.
The minimal cell experiments were done with mycoplasma, which (as far as I know) does not age. More generally, as I understand it, most bacteria don’t age, at least not in any sense similar to animals.
Also, I expect wild-type mycoplasma already had no transposons in its genome, since the organism evolved under very heavy evolutionary pressure for a small genome. (That’s why it was chosen for the minimal cell experiments.)
An initial search doesn’t confirm whether or not mycoplasma age. Bacteria do age though; even seemingly-symmetrical divisions yield one “parent” bacterium that ages and dies.
If mycoplasma genuinely don’t, that would be fascinating and potentially yield valuable clues on the aging mechanism.
Do you have a reference on that? I’m familiar with how it works with budding yeast, but I’ve never heard of anything like that in a prokaryote.
https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.0030058
This is the source I found. It’s fairly old, so if you’ve found something that supersedes it I’d be interested.
Oh wow, that’s really neat. I doubt that it has any relevance to the aging mechanisms of multicellular organisms, but very cool in its own right. And definitely not transposon-mediated.