February 4, 2013 Contact: John Ascenzi, Children's Hospital of
Philadelphia, 267-426-6055 or email@example.com By broadly
comparing the DNA of children to that of elderly people, gene
researchers have identified gene variants that influence
lifespan, either by raising disease risk or by providing
protection from disease. “This research is the first genome-
wide, population-based study of copy number variations in
children associated with human longevity,” said study leader
Hakon Hakonarson, MD, PhD, director of the Center for Applied
Genomics at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. The study
appeared Jan. 30 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE. Copy
number variations (CNVs) are losses or gains in DNA sequence
that are usually rare, but which often play an important role in
raising or lowering the risk of disease. The study team compared
the rates of CNVs in a sample of 7,313 young subjects, 18 years
old and below, from the Children’s Hospital network, to a group
of 2,701 Icelandic subjects, 67 years old or