Genetic Sequence of World’s Oldest Living Woman Revealed

A new research has revealed the complete genetic code of a woman who was the oldest living person when she died at the age of 115.

The study was presented at the American Society of Human Genetics annual meeting in Montreal, Canada, by a team of researchers led by Henne Holstege from the VU University Medical Center in Amsterdam.

According to the reports, despite her age at the time of her death, the woman had a very sharp mind without any signs of dementia. It was also suggested that it was due to her genes that she was protected against the degenerative condition of dementia.

The researchers also said that further studies could provide useful insights as to why some people are born with genes for a longer life.

It was also revealed that the woman died of gastric cancer after having being treated for breast cancer at the age of 100.

The BBC reported that the woman was born prematurely and had a long and healthy life. Following her death, a postmortem examination indicated that she was not suffering from dementia. In fact, a test of her mental skills demonstrated that she had the performance of a woman aged 60-75 years at around the age of 113.

Sequencing the genome of the world's oldest woman is an important starting point to understand how DNA variation relates to the process of having a long, healthy life. But in order to really understand the underlying biology of living a long, healthy life, we will need to look at the DNA sequence of hundreds or thousands of people, the BBC quoted Dr Jeffrey Barrett of the Sanger Centre in Cambridge as commenting on the new study.