telomeres, age and reproduction in a long-lived reptile端粒、年龄和繁殖长寿的爬行动物.pdfVIP

Telomeres, Age and Reproduction in a Long-Lived Reptile Virginie Plot1,2*, Franc¸ois Criscuolo1,2, Sandrine Zahn1,2, Jean-Yves Georges1,2 ´ 1 Universite de Strasbourg, Institut Pluridisciplinaire Hubert Curien, Strasbourg, France, 2 CNRS, UMR 7178, Strasbourg, France Abstract A major interest has recently emerged in understanding how telomere shortening, mechanism triggering cell senescence, is linked to organism ageing and life history traits in wild species. However, the links between telomere length and key history traits such as reproductive performances have received little attention and remain unclear to date. The leatherback turtle Dermochelys coriacea is a long-lived species showing rapid growth at early stages of life, one of the highest reproductive outputs observed in vertebrates and a dichotomised reproductive pattern related to migrations lasting 2 or 3 years, supposedly associated with different environmental conditions. Here we tested the prediction of blood telomere shortening with age in this species and investigated the relationship between blood telomere length and reproductive performances in leatherback turtles nesting in French Guiana. We found that blood telomere length did not differ between hatchlings and adults. The absence of blood telomere shortening with age may be related to an early high telomerase activity. This telomere-restoring enzyme was formerly suggested to be involved in preventing early telomere attrition in early fast- growing and long-lived species, including squamate reptiles. We found that within one nesting cycle, adult females having performed shorter migrations prior to the considered nesting season had shorter blood telomeres and lower reproductive output. We propose that shorter blood telomeres may result from higher oxidative stress in individuals breed