The secret to longer life may be hidden in bat DNA

Some of the best clues to living a long, healthy life may be hidden in the DNA of bats, mammals that can survive for remarkably long periods relative to their body size.

The idea fascinated Juan Manuel Vazquez while he was a graduate student at the University of Chicago. At the time, however, there was little published genomic information about bats that could help answer questions about longevity. After becoming a UC Berkeley postdoctoral fellow in 2020, he began searching across the Western U.S. for bat species that could provide tissue samples for DNA sequencing.