And what did you find when you looked at his epigenetic pattern, these methylation or methyl groups that are put onto the DNA to turn genes on or off? How does he differ compared with a tortoise that hatched today?

Yeah, that was really our big surprising finding.

When we looked at most of his genes, and we also compared him to other tortoises, we had two 91-year-old tortoises, a 12-year-old tortoise, and a 5-year-old tortoise.

And we compare the age of his genes to those other four tortoises.

Most of his genes looked very old, much, much older than the 91-year-olds, implying that indeed he was 100 years older at least or more compared to them.

But a subset of the genes, about 280 of the genes, looked very young, very pristine, very much like the five-year-old.

And when we looked at the 91-year-olds, they didn't have that.

Intriguing, isn't it? Because then there are several questions that spring from that, which is one, what's the consequence of it just being in the mitochondria like that? And two, why is it just the mitochondria that seem to be spared and he seems to be aging elsewhere the normal way?

Uh, when you've got the DNA, what-- before you reveal what you found, what type of things were you looking out for that might hint as to how this creature has stayed alive for so long?

Yeah, we were interested in things like, you know, maybe why does Jonathan not have cancer? And so we were expecting to find genes that maybe helped uh, in him not getting cancer? We found out that his mitochondria, the genes that actually are involved in make, uh, turning on his mitochondrial seemed very new.

Now mitochondria are the powerhouses.

They're like the batteries of the cells.

They provide the energy to the cell.

And we f- when we compared him to a five-year-old tortoise, uh, 190 years difference, he looked very similar to the five-year-old.

So when we compared him also to 91-year-old tortoises, he looked much younger.

Uh, is there anything that we've learned, uh, uh, about what humans can do from studying Jonathan's DNA?

What else can we learn from this tortoise? What, what can we learn from creatures that have lived so long? Are there any surprising things that, that people don't know about?

Well, the, the surprising thing was the mitochondrial finding, but you know, I suspect that he has other surprises that we were not able to identify because, you know, it's hard to find something you're not sure what you're looking for, right? And especially in one test subject.

You know, if we had 15 or 30 of Jonathan's, then we could compare each, each of them to each other and see what they share in common but what's different than the other tortoises.

But only having one tortoise, um, it makes it sort of difficult to do that.

What are some of the big unopened questions right now in longevity research?

research?Yeah, I think, I think the main one, this is kinda why we did the analysis on Jonathan, is kinda what is the, the first driver of, of age, aging? And, uh, you know, we know there's lots of passenger drivers, things that, that contribute, but is there one major thing that kinda controls the whole aging process? And so, uh, in that regard, we don't know the answer to it.

This is, again, maybe a hint from Jonathan data that it may be mitochondria, but again, more studies have to be done to evaluate that, especially in humans.

What else can we learn from this tortoise? What, what can we learn from creatures that have lived so long? Are there any surprising things that, that people don't know about?

Well, the, the surprising thing was the mitochondrial finding, but you know, I suspect that he has other surprises that we were not able to identify.

Because, you know, it's hard to find something you're not sure what you're looking for, right? And especially in one test subject.

You know, if we had 15 or 30 of Jonathan's, then we could compare each, each of them to each other and see what they share in common, but what's different than the other tortoises.

But only having one tortoise, um, it makes it sorta difficult to do that.

What are some of the big unopened questions right now in longevity research?

research?Yeah, I think, I think the main one, this is kind of why we did the analysis on Jonathan, is kind of what is the, the first driver of, of age, aging? And, uh, you know, we know there's lots of passenger drivers, things that, that contribute, but is there one major thing that kind of controls the whole aging process? And so, uh, in that regard, we don't know the answer to it.

This is, again, maybe a hint from Jonathan data that it may be mitochondria, but again, more studies have to be done to evaluate that, especially in humans.