SCIENTISTS OPENED A 194-YEAR-OLD TORTOISE'S MOUTH, THEN STOLE HIS DNA

Jonathan the Aldabra giant tortoise hatched around 1832, arrived on St. Helena in 1882 as a gift to the British governor, and has been loitering at Plantation House ever since. On Wednesday his genome and epigenome went up in Science Advances, the first time anyone has read a giant tortoise's epigenome. He got picked partly because he kept receipts: other Aldabras have been claimed to be this old, but Jonathan has the paperwork. Nobody was letting a team draw blood from a 194-year-old national treasure, so they went with cheek scrapings and saliva, teasing him with food until he opened his jaws. The DNA came back short and contaminated with bacteria. COVID stalled the project. They patched the gaps with DNA from a younger tortoise, which leaves the published sequence about 95 percent Jonathan and 5 percent some other guy. What they got: 287 gene variants unique to him, sitting in DNA repair, insulin regulation, telomere and mitochondrial pathways. The epigenome was the better find. Co-lead author Benjamin Vaisvil calls the genome a cookbook and the epigenome the handwritten notes in the margins, which smear as the book ages. Most of Jonathan's notes are unreadable. The ones controlling his mitochondrial genes are tidier than every tortoise they tested except a five-year-old. It's one animal and it's observational, so hold the supplement order. Jonathan is also blind, has no sense of smell, and in April survived a hoax announcing his death that pulled nearly two million views.

Why you should give a shit: Most of Jonathan is visibly 194 years old and his mitochondrial switches are not, which is the whole bet of longevity research: nobody actually wants 194 birthdays, they want to not spend the last 50 falling apart.