Back

Misclassification of heritable mortality undermines estimates of intrinsic life span heritability

2026-02-27 genetic and genomic medicine Title + abstract only
View on medRxiv
Show abstract

In a recent article in Science, Shenhar et al. report that human life span heritability reaches [~]55% after removing "extrinsic" mortality, roughly seven-fold higher than recent large pedigree estimates. This conclusion rests on classifying deaths from infections and accidents as environmental noise independent of genetics. This premise is biologically untenable: susceptibility to severe infection is substantially heritable, with adoptee studies showing relative risks exceeding 5 for infection ...

Predicted journal destinations

1
Scientific Reports
701 training papers
Top 9% 14.3%
2
Nature Communications
483 training papers
Top 5% 14.3%
3
The American Journal of Human Genetics
77 training papers
Top 1% 11.6%
4
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
100 training papers
Top 0.4% 7.7%
5
Nature Genetics
72 training papers
Top 3% 5.8%
6
PLOS Genetics
39 training papers
Top 0.8% 3.8%
7
PLOS ONE
1737 training papers
Top 87% 3.8%
8
Genome Medicine
56 training papers
Top 5% 1.9%
9
Human Genetics and Genomics Advances
39 training papers
Top 4% 1.9%
10
Cell Genomics
34 training papers
Top 3% 1.9%
11
Bulletin of Mathematical Biology
17 training papers
Top 0.3% 1.5%
12
eLife
262 training papers
Top 29% 1.5%
13
Genes
21 training papers
Top 1% 1.5%
14
Human Molecular Genetics
28 training papers
Top 3% 1.5%
15
Genetics in Medicine
57 training papers
Top 6% 1.5%
16
Communications Biology
36 training papers
Top 2% 1.3%
17
European Journal of Human Genetics
25 training papers
Top 4% 1.3%
18
Nature
58 training papers
Top 4% 1.3%
19
Science Advances
52 training papers
Top 2% 1.2%
20
Frontiers in Genetics
32 training papers
Top 6% 1.2%
21
Nature Medicine
88 training papers
Top 12% 0.9%
22
Translational Psychiatry
94 training papers
Top 9% 0.9%
23
Bioinformatics
24 training papers
Top 2% 0.9%
24
International Journal of Epidemiology
65 training papers
Top 10% 0.9%
25
Molecular Psychiatry
84 training papers
Top 10% 0.7%
26
Circulation: Genomic and Precision Medicine
30 training papers
Top 7% 0.7%
27
Biological Psychiatry
36 training papers
Top 6% 0.7%
28
Brain
69 training papers
Top 11% 0.7%
29
npj Genomic Medicine
18 training papers
Top 5% 0.7%