They are a remarkable group. A 106-year-old woman won her first swimming competition at age 100, and a 107-year-old man is still working. A chocolate-loving nun who lived to be 116 years old.

These three are some of the oldest members of the group. centenarian In Brazil, limits of human lifespan. Although they are still recruiting participants for the DNA Longevo (Portuguese for Long Life DNA) study, scientists have already sequenced the genomes of more than 160 centenarians. The 20 participants are “supercentenarians,” or people who have reached the age of 110.

Early data suggests that supercentenarians had no special abilities healthy eating Or they don’t have access to exercise habits or premium medicines for most of their lives. The secret to their longevity may lie in their genome. In the preliminary report¹ In a paper published this month, researchers hypothesize that the participants’ genetic diversity may play a role in their resilience.

“We know that Brazil has a highly admixed population, which may contribute to longevity,” said Mayana Zatz, a geneticist who leads the project at the University of São Paulo’s Center for Human Genome and Stem Cell Research.

long-lasting diversity

Many of the participants mixed ancestry of European, African, and Native American descent;. By contrast, most studies examining the health of centenarians have focused on genetically more homogeneous populations, so this study helps fill a gap in the field, said Paola Sebastiani, a biostatistician at Tufts University in Boston, Massachusetts, who has worked on several other longevity studies. “In the United States, it has been very difficult to recruit large numbers of centenarians with different genetic backgrounds,” she says.

Another aspect that sets the Brazilian cohort apart is that participants have remained relatively healthy despite limited access to health care. Many live in small villages far from medical centers, Zatz said.

“This suggests that healthy aging is not due to access to modern targeted therapies or very early screening, but is caused by other factors,” said Manel Esteller, a doctor specializing in genetics at the University of Barcelona in Spain. “Europe, the United States, and Japan, where most other centenarian research is done, have relatively high levels of medical support.”

overturn expectations

Participants include Sister Ina Canavarro Lucas, a nun recognized as the world’s oldest person when she passed away last April at the age of 116. She, like the other participants, did not limit her intake of sugar or fat. “She loved chocolate. We visited her once for Easter and brought her chocolates, and she was glowing,” Zatz recalls.

Another notable case is a 106-year-old woman who started swimming at the age of 70 and won her first competition 30 years later. She has two sisters who are over 100 years old and an aunt who is 110 years old. “These families are particularly valuable because genetics obviously plays an important role, and the sisters live in different places, so it’s not just a matter of sharing the same environment,” Satz says.

Is there a limit to human lifespan?

One of the volunteers is a 107-year-old man, believed to be the oldest person to hold a formal job in Brazil. He has a job in a supermarket organizing shopping carts. “When we went to see him at the market, we passed him. He was moving quickly from one end to the other, very different from the image we usually have of a centenarian,” says Matheus de Castro, a researcher specializing in gerontology and cell biology at the University of São Paulo.

Most participants were still mentally alert, Zatz said, adding that they understood the purpose of the study, agreed to participate, and many said they were willing to contribute. “Sometimes participants even became emotional knowing that their blood collection might help someone else in some way,” she says. For participants who are not cognitively healthy, researchers will obtain informed consent from their families.