Quesada, VíctorKuderna, Lukas, 1989-Marquès i Bonet, Tomàs, 1975-López Otín, Carlos2019-03-112019-03-112019Quesada V, Freitas-Rodríguez S, Miller J, Pérez-Silva JG, Jiang ZF, Tapia W et al. Giant tortoise genomes provide insights into longevity and age-related disease. Nat Ecol Evol. 2019;3(1):87-95. DOI: 10.1038/s41559-018-0733-x2397-334Xhttp://hdl.handle.net/10230/36785Giant tortoises are among the longest-lived vertebrate animals and, as such, provide an excellent model to study traits like longevity and age-related diseases. However, genomic and molecular evolutionary information on giant tortoises is scarce. Here, we describe a global analysis of the genomes of Lonesome George-the iconic last member of Chelonoidis abingdonii-and the Aldabra giant tortoise (Aldabrachelys gigantea). Comparison of these genomes with those of related species, using both unsupervised and supervised analyses, led us to detect lineage-specific variants affecting DNA repair genes, inflammatory mediators and genes related to cancer development. Our study also hints at specific evolutionary strategies linked to increased lifespan, and expands our understanding of the genomic determinants of ageing. These new genome sequences also provide important resources to help the efforts for restoration of giant tortoise populations.application/pdfeng© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited 2018. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.info:eu-repo/semantics/articlehttp://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41559-018-0733-xComparative genomicsMolecular evolutioninfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess