Greenland sharks maintain vision for centuries through DNA repair mechanism

Sharks are so cool, man. They’ve just been chilling on the planet for 400 million years, swimming the oceans while epochs passed them by in their periphery. Their entire biology is pretty much unchanged. They’ve been sharks the whole time.

Unfortunately it also seems like these sharks are plagued by parasites in their eyes:

The shark is often infested by the copepod Ommatokoita elongata, a crustacean that attaches itself to the shark's eyes.[17] The copepod may display bioluminescence, thus attracting prey for the shark in a mutualistic relationship, but this hypothesis has not been verified.[18] These parasites can cause multiple forms of damage to the sharks' eyes, such as ulceration, mineralization, and edema of the cornea, leading to almost complete blindness.[11] This does not seem to reduce the life expectancy or predatory ability of Greenland sharks, due to their strong reliance on smell and hearing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland_shark

So wait did they just catch a 200 year old shark and cut its eye ball out to have a look?

Highly recommend the book "Shark Drunk: The Art of Catching a Large Shark from a Tiny Rubber Dinghy in a Big Ocean" by Morten Strøksnes if you're interested in old sharks, small boats or deep oceans https://bookshop.org/p/books/shark-drunk-the-art-of-catching...

This is so messed up harvesting the eye from a creature that lives hundreds of years. I guess they put the shark down. RIP one eye.

I had no idea they could live for 400 years... I actually now realize that I never thought about the lifespan of a shark before, but I would have guessed (prior to this education) around 25 years or so.

I have permanent damage on my retina of other eye. I hope one day humans could regenerate their retinas as sharks and zebrafish can do. Seems strange, that fish living in deep dark oceans can fix their eyes, while most mammals who rely on vision a lot more cannot.

So how did they get the Greenland shark eyeballs to dissect for the research paper?

This article contains basically no information about the topic mentioned in the headline, just vaguely related chitchat.

This shark is really an amazing creature.

I hate this stupid style of writing. So did they find out anything new besides the fact that a shark supposedly still sees the light? Did this particular shark get a parasite on its eyes or not? Not a single word about DNA repair mechanisms except for in the baity title. Awful.

TL;DR: we think sharks eyes can still see light even if the sharks a centuries old, please fund us for further research!

Soon to be America sharks.

I’m starting to realise we don’t really want a cure to aging.

Imagine a world where people like Stalin never die. People like bill gates never have to pretend to be a nice person…

If there’s no chance of death, there will never be any progress in society. People in power would just establish a tighter and tighter grip. All the boomers would be immune to death and disease, but the treatment would be banned for the young because they haven’t done enough to earn it.

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Anyone else surprised to see a Greenland headline without Trump involved?

It’s sinful to fish and kill these ancient creatures up from the deep for minor scientific progress.