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The Oldest Mouse Contest
Shipud writes "Nature
reports a contest that was launched in Britain today, to produce the oldest laboratory mouse. Current record in 5 years -- 150 in human years. From the page
: ``Researchers can use any technique to boost longevity, including genetic manipulation and stem-cell therapy''. Winners will receive cash for every day beyond the current record. The
Methuselah Mouse contest was created in an effort to boost research into human longevity."
When DNA is replicated, the transcription occurs not from the start of a strand, but a few "words" into the sequence. Since, this might cut off valuable/active genes, there are telemores "prefixed" to the start of these sequence. These are useless bits of genes that can be safely cut off during cell copying. But as the instance of DNA gets copied more and more, in each succeeding generation, the telomere gets reduced. Eventually coming to the point where during copying, active genes get clipped. The limit is around 50 cell divisions, IIRC. Someone by the age of 60 has roughly 40% of telomere length as compared to birth. There's a gene called telomerase that synthesizes these telomeres at the ends of chromosones. Mice in which telomerase has been re-activated post-infancy have lived thrice as long!!! But there are ill-effects of activating telomerase post-infancy. Cancer tumors require telomerase to work as well. So, it's a double-edged sword. Hope someone figures out a good alternative.
I've long been disappointed that biotech is so damn conservative about trying to just go for it and take some chances. We're all dying after all. It's like the absurdity of cancer therapies that can't be tried on terminally patients because they might have side effects. Jesus Christ on a crutch, that's like some kind of absurd joke
Indeed, I'm testing the waters of bionformatics myself lately so I can stop compaining and do something about it. But that's another story.
What caught my eye was the thing about being able to use stem cells. The whole stem cell story is so amazing and yet it seems that there's this amazing potential and nobody wants to try anything amazing with it. The attitude is like, yes this is amazing but we can't use it in amazing ways because it's experimental and we don't know what might happen.
If I had a research budget and I was in this competition, my idea would be to create embryonic stem cells of my mouse and just inject them into the thing like it was a pin cushion. Damn the torpedos.
So what's the worse things that's going to happen? A dead lab rat? What if the thing stays young forever? Let's pick up the pace people!
I raised mice for several years and they [small gene pool] got more and more inbred resulting in cancers and other problems. I would think to avoid tumors and short life spans [which I had problems with], one would need a large breeding stock and keep a new influx of genetic material.
-- Some days you're the dog; some days you're the hydrant.
Researchers can use any technique to boost longevity
Flash freezing ?
When will I end this grieving ? When will my future begin ?
Not even close...look here: http://sloan.stanford.edu/MouseSite/Archive/patent /Mouse.html
Just another day in Paradise
That is the whole problem. My mom works in an elderly home and she told me that most of them have signs of dementia. The problem is not that our bodies cannot live very long, the problem is that the brain usually starts malfunctioning first.
Sad, but true....
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Human immortality sounds good, but the human population is already exploding and thats *with* people dying off. If a large number of people are going to become immortal then we need population controls in place, or at least teaching how birth control is used in school ;).
Having a grandfather who spent 4 years in a home after a stroke and a heart attack, I know exactly what you mean. I do wonder if thats not a very good representative sample though. There are hoards of elderly people that are just fine out in the world. I wonder if being treated as an invalid as most people in a home are is more a cause of dementia than a symptom.
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This is something that's often puzzled me. Who decided how many 'human years' there are in one mouse year (or cat/dog year for that matter)?
Maybe we could make leaving the planet a requirement for treatment. Anyone for a Mars colony?
According to this article, scientists are going to have a hard time getting their mice to live longer. Because cancer tends to "take over" as an animal's age increases, scientists have tried using cancer-preventing proteins to prevent this. The problem they found, however, was that it accelerated the aging process for mice. That's not to say that some other method may find a way around this, but scientists do still seem to be grappling with the issue.
:^)
Besides, didn't anyone read Brave New World Revisited? Overpopulation is not the answer.
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My pet mouse lived for 2.5 years (before getting the deadly neurological/arthritis problem most mice get at that age) and I have seen others live that long easily. I thought mice were the animals that were tested with the low cal diet that made them live 3 times longer. I remember the news film having mice.
Shouldn't it be at least 7 years if mice were in that test? Something is strange here.
Mice have very short life spans. They die of old age within a few years. So I question how much can be learned about increasing human longevity by trying to create a Methuselah mouse. Bats, on the other hand, are about the same size as mice and naturally live for three decades or more. It would be more useful to know why a bat can live to age 30 "out of the box" than how we can manufacture a mouse that lives to the ripe old age of 6.
if being treated as an invalid as most people in a home
From what I understand, long term care in places of last resort is not nice. Care is generally minimal, to reduce cost.
A financial advisor I had once suggested that I go visit some of these homes and then decide how much to save for retirement.
In his words,
"Provided by the management for your protection."
That's what I'm saying -- fucking around with lab mice is a Good Thing, because it lets us better all mankind. But we need to keep in mind that at the end of the day, we're still (sometimes, at least) killing things, and it should be done with reverence and maybe a little regret. Making messing-around-with-rodent-lives a contest with prize money seems a little in bad taste, to me.
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If you look at the statistics more closely, you'll probably notice that improved hygienic conditions have increased the average life expectancy more than all medical advantages ever made combined. Life expectancy 200yrs ago was 45 or so, today it's 80, but the standard deviation was much higher then than it is now (that is, there were *many* more 90-year-olds 200yrs ago than there are 160-year-olds today).
This means that "god" probably never intended us to die at 40, it's just that these days more people reach their "pre-defined" life expectancy instead of being wiped out by some minor unpleasantness long before their time has run out.
I had a pet wild mouse that lasted seven.
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