In 2012, the United Nations estimated that there were roughly 316,600 living people over the age of 100. By 2050, medical technologies will raise that number to over three million. The search for immortality is not a niche academic pursuit. It’s a thriving area of technological innovation, funded heavily by an unexpected group – technology billionaires (The Telegraph).

Scientists like de Magalhaes and Gladyshev are now on the hunt for other candidates, using real-life Methuselahs as their guide.

Across mammals alone, expected lifespan can vary 100 fold, from shrews that live for no longer than 1.5 years to the bowhead whales that can live for more than 200. It is as if, for various reasons, natural selection has somehow pushed certain creatures to evolve their own elixir of life.