"Bees can have their lives lengthened tenfold, an international research team headed by Dr. Gro Amdam at Arizona State University has found. The antioxidant protein vitellogenin reverses the aging process in some worker bees. This may eventually lead to breakthroughs in the research on aging in humans.
The process occurs in worker bees that become nurse bees. Through the transformation process, the details of which are still sketchy, the bees experience a considerable increase in the concentration of the protein vitellogenion in their body. Vitellogenin appears to prevent and reverse oxidative stress to the bees, a process strongly associated with aging.
The team observed that worker bees, which at the start of their lives have a life expectancy of about four to six weeks, could go through a process through which they would take on the characteristics of bees that are tasked with taking care of queen bees and offspring.
During this process, the bees appeared to have their immune system completely renewed, and they would live to ages of six to ten months, up to ten times their original life expectancy. This means that they are radically revitalized, in essence having their aging process reversed.
'Only the bees that go from having a worker role to having caretaking duties will go through the process', Dr. Amdam says.
Similar rejuvenation processes have never been observed in any other animal."
Antioxidant Reverses Aging in Bees
Jan Siqueland