Biologists have learned to determine the age of lobsters
Biologists have figured out how to determine the age of lobsters using DNA. The work, published in Evolutional Applications , aims to improve the resilience of the population of these arthropods.
It is usually difficult to calculate the age of a lobster visually. And this is a big problem for fisheries. Lobsters often change their shells during molting. In addition, they grow throughout their lives.
The lifespan of a lobster, according to some estimates, can be up to 100 years. Scientists even wondered how these arthropods age.
And it seems that they have found the answer: experts have linked age with the enzyme telomerase (repetitive DNA strands restore it). The analysis showed that the more changes in DNA, the longer the lobster lived.
Earlier, geneticists identified a mutation that caused people to lose their tails. The loss of the tail turned out to be an “evolutionary compromise” that provided new opportunities for human ancestors.
