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."

Comments

Works by maintaining/increasing telomere length

[Gyan]

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.

This is the kind of research I like to see.

[ahfoo]

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!

Narrrf!

[spumoni_fettuccini]

Errr... What are we gonna do tonight Brain? The same thing we do every night Pinky... keep up with the Jones rabbits.

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.

any technique ?

[selderrr]

Researchers can use any technique to boost longevity

Flash freezing ?

Human Immortality

[Famatra]

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 ;).

Re:Human Immortality

[tid242]

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 ;).

this is the kind of rhetoric i hear all of the time, as if people who live to be 1000 years old will still think it's necessary to start having kids when they're 20 and keep having them until they die (actually, in certain religious circles they might, which is pretty damn scary for us apostates).

the most obvious fallicy in all of this is that immortality will be available for everyone. Compare treatments for HIV with what you can probably (and rightly) assume about any hypothetical immortality-treatments - who has access to antiretroviral therapy? - allow me to name countries: USA, Japan, UK, Germany, Italy, France, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Canada, etc, etc,. Notice anything odd about said selection of countries? Perhaps that they house about 10% of the world's population, have less than 5% of the world's HIV(+) population, and oh, by the way, they also control about 90% of the world's wealth. Now think of a hypothetical anti-aging pill (about the least-likely route of administration of anti-aging therapy, if you ask me), who do you suppose will have it first? - i'd guess the US and Western Europe (who pretty much all have negative population growths as it is (excluding immigration)), guess who'll own the rights to said therapy? - i'd guess US and/or Western European companies, Guess how much it'll cost? - i'd guess probably a whole lot more than most people in the US and Western Europe can afford, let alone people dying of diarrhea in 3rd world countries. Sure the price might eventually come down to levels affordable by "everyone" but that doesn't change the fact that most people world-wide die of nothing that has much at all to do with ageing.

Even in the US, it is questionable whether many of the biggest killers are really directly caused by ageing, cancer is really the only one that comes to mind that probably is. Heart disease, Diabetes, suicide, accidents, and almost all of the others on the top 10 (for any age group apart from cancer) can't be said to be caused by being old, they may be time-dependent processes, but it doesn't mean that the physiological changes associated with ageing causes them...

anyway, just a thought (or two).

-tid242

Re:Why?

[SlamMan]

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.

This is a hard problem

[Jon Abbott]

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. :^)