Hi listeners, Benjamin here.

Welcome to the Nature Briefing podcast, the Friday show where we talk about a couple of stories we have read in the Nature briefing,

which is, of course, nature's daily roundup of the latest science stories.

We're actually recording this in the office today, so you might hear a few folk walk past.

But one of the folk who hasn't walked past and is here to talk science with me is nick petrich chow nick how you doing today i'm doing well ben i have indeed stopped to come and tell you about some interesting science that i think you'll agree shines a light on some new research well that has baited the hook i shall say but i've got a story that i'm going to talk about first. And it's something that I read about in nature. And it's about the preliminary findings from a study in Brazil, investigating why some people live to a very big age, like over a hundred. So this is looking at things that I'm guessing allowed them to get to such a great age.

Yeah, and it's something that we've covered on the show before, right?

The science of ageing is incredibly complex, but of course it's a huge interest to a lot of researchers as well.

Not just extending lifespan, but extending healthy lifespan as well.

And this story in particular looks at the DNA

Longuevo study, which is Portuguese for long-lived DNA. And this study is still recruiting

participants. But scientists have already sequenced the genomes of more than 160 centenarians,

so folk over 100, and 20 participants are super centenarians. Those are people who've reached over 110 years old.

Wow, okay, so such incredible lifespans, and hopefully their genetics can tell us something about how they got there.

And genetics is the important word as well. So yeah, you're right. It's hope that understanding why folk like

this can live so long is something that scientists are interested in investigating, you know,

for clues about human longevity. And as I say, genetics is key. Because when you see a local news

show and they've spoken to someone who's over 100 and you ask them about their lifestyle,

they say, well, I smoke 20 cigarettes a day and I have a bottle of gin for breakfast, right?

So we need to be a little bit careful taking them in isolation.

And that appears to be relevant here as well.

So early data showed that the supercentenarians in this study did not have especially

healthy diets or exercise ratios or access to high-end medicine for most of their lives.

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