Study finds bowhead whales excel at DNA repair

For more than a millennium, Alaska’s Inupiat hunters have known bowhead whales as ageless neighbors, even recognizing individuals at sea. Now scientists estimate some bowheads live up to 268 years, with harpoon points from the mid 1800s found in whales caught in the late 1900s. A Nature study led by University of Rochester researchers Vera Gorbunova and Andrei Seluanov reports the whales excel at repairing damaged DNA, aided by higher levels and fine tuned interactions of certain proteins. The work suggests similar tweaks could someday extend healthy human life spans. Bowheads can weigh over 88 tons.