Telomere Length Correlates with Life Span of Dog Breeds
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Telomeric DNA repeats are lost as normal somatic cells replicate. When telomeres reach a critically short length, a DNA damage signal is initiated, inducing cell senescence. Some studies have indicated that telomere length correlates with mortality, suggesting that telomere length contributes to human life span; however, other studies report no correlation, and thus the issue remains controversial. Domestic dogs show parallels in telomere biology to humans, with similar telomere length, telomere attrition, and absence of somatic cell telomerase activity. Using this model, we find that peripheral blood mononuclear cell (PBMC) telomere length is a strong predictor of average life span among 15 different breeds (p < 0.0001), consistent with telomeres playing a role in life span determination. Dogs lose telomeric DNA ~10-fold faster than humans, which is similar to the ratio of average life spans between these species. Breeds with shorter mean telomere lengths show an increased probability of death from cardiovascular disease, which was previously correlated with short telomere length in humans.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".