In 2001, Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson began a journey that led to an unexpected discovery—she did it by studying dolphins.
The U.S. Navy invited Venn-Watson, a veterinary epidemiologist and public health scientist, to help improve the health of their aging dolphins.
In her work, she discovered that dolphins age much like humans and are susceptible to the same age-related conditions—like high cholesterol, chronic inflammation, and arthritis. However, not all the Navy dolphins developed these conditions, and she and a team of scientists set out to discover why.
Using metabolomics—the study of metabolites in an organism, tissue, or cell—they identified a specific nutrient present in humans and dolphins that emerged as a key predictor of healthy aging in dolphins called pentadecanoic acid, or C15:0....
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