10.5061/DRYAD.1C59ZW3V0
Pepke, Michael Le
0000-0002-6280-1829
Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Eisenberg, Dan T. A.
0000-0003-0812-1862
University of Washington
Data from: On the comparative biology of mammalian telomeres: telomere
length co-evolves with body mass, lifespan and cancer risk
Dryad
dataset
2021
FOS: Biological sciences
The Research Council of Norway
https://ror.org/00epmv149
223257
2021-03-04T00:00:00Z
2021-03-04T00:00:00Z
en
https://doi.org/10.22541/au.159682209.91318403
https://doi.org/10.1111/mec.15870
38198 bytes
3
CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication
Telomeres, the short repetitive DNA sequences that cap the ends of linear
chromosomes, shorten during cell division and are implicated in senescence
in most species. Telomerase can rebuild telomeres but is repressed in many
mammals that exhibit replicative senescence, presumably as a tumor
suppression mechanism. It is therefore important to understand the
co-evolution of telomere biology and life-history traits that has shaped
the diversity of senescence patterns across species. Gomes et al. (2011)
produced a large data set on telomere length (TL), telomerase activity,
body mass and lifespan among 57 mammal species. We re-analyzed their data
using the same phylogenetic multiple regressions and with several
additional analyses to test the robustness of findings. We found
substantial inconsistencies in our results compared to Gomes et
al.'s. Consistent with Gomes et al. we found an inverse association
between TL and lifespan. Contrary to the analyses in Gomes et al., we
found a generally robust inverse association between TL and mass, and only
weak non-robust evidence for an association between telomerase activity
and mass. These results suggest that shorter TL may have been selected for
in larger and longer-lived species – likely as a mechanism to suppress
cancer. We support this hypothesis by showing that longer telomeres
predict higher cancer risk across 22 species. Furthermore, we find that
domesticated species have longer telomeres. Our results call into question
past interpretations of the co-evolution of telomere biology and
life-history traits and stress the need for careful attention to model
construction.
The data is compiled from the literature as described in the methods
section in the paper.