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she blinded me with science

Science May Have Figured Out Why Women Live Longer Than Men: RNA

by Susana Polo | 4:24 pm, September 28th

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It’s common scientific knowledge that women have better life expectancies than men, even in the womb and in premature birth. And the efforts of science, anthopology, and sociology have come up with any number of reasons why. According to Wikipedia:

Traditional arguments tend to favor socio-environmental factors: historically, men have generally consumed more tobacco, alcohol and drugs… and are more likely to die from many associated [with drug use] diseases… Men are also more likely to die from injuries… and most of the leading causes of death (some already stated above) than women…

Some argue that shorter male life expectancy is merely another manifestation of the general rule, seen in all mammal species, that larger individuals tend on average to have shorter lives. This biological difference occurs because women have more resistance to infections and degenerative diseases.

Dr. Claude Libert fixed upon this last fact, that women are more immune resistant, and decided to inspect it’s causes. And he found a lot of RNA.

No, really, he looked at the fact that the X chromosome, of which women have two, has a lot of microRNA, a kind of RNA that is generally concerned with whether a gene is expressed or not. Apparently a lot of these microRNA strands are triggered to repress genes, but if a person has more than one X chromosome, there’s a greater chance that at least one of the two will have the gene expressed. According to Libert, while the function of most microRNA is unknown, “several X chromosome-located strands of microRNA have important functions in immunity and cancer.”

If the there are many more microRNA strands on the X chromosome, his theory may bear out, and maybe eventually we can find a way to teach guys’ X chromosomes to quite silencing so many immune beneficial genes.

(via io9.)

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  • Melissa Shumate

    Dear Mary Sue writers, please stop using the contraction for “it is” when you mean the possessive form of “it” for the sake of all your readers. This is not a one-time error, and it’s making me very, very sad.

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  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_7G4SWUX2MCWWXLMYNN347JMIZY Frodo Baggins

    While we’re proofreading, you mean “quit,” not “quite.”

  • Anonymous

    I am more than a bit tired of blaming our genes for everything, ignoring the fact that our lifestyle does heavily influence whether or not those genes express. I smells more than a bit of the overused excuse: “It’s my genes, it’s not my fault, I don’t have to change the way I live”

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  • Caravelle

    “Blaming our genes for everything”, wtf ? Did you miss the “traditional arguments tend to favor socio-economic factors” ? That’s certainly how I’d always heard it. Ultimately if women do have a longer life expectancy then men there IS a reason for it, whether that reason is genes, socio-economic factors, something else or more likely a combination of all of those. Science is about finding out what that reason is, by looking at the evidence for all factors. Including genes.

    And I bet researchers in genetics know a whole lot more about the ways our lifestyle influences whether or not genes express than you do.

    In this case they don’t explain the link between the micro-RNA and life expectancy other than the “immunity and cancer” thing, which I thought was unclear. There might be more in the actual paper but otherwise it looks more like another incremental step in understanding genetics and our bodies, than the answer to any particular question.

    Your response, however, is so unrelated to the article’s actual content I can only assume you object to any research into genes on principle.

  • Anonymous

    I would add the proper use of “fewer” in place of “less”, as well. Find yourselves a grammarian for final proofs, please!