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

Three words...

[Anonymous Coward]

Cry Oh Genix. I Am the Immortal Mousie!

I Win!

[akadruid]

I've had my mouse for nearly 10 years!
All they need is a little care and attention, and maybe cleaning the ball every now and again.
Of course, many people just go rushing after new toys, like PS2 and scollwheels and second buttons...

Well some one was gonna say it anyway I guess

Re:I Win!

[dcw3]

Not even close...look here: http://sloan.stanford.edu/MouseSite/Archive/patent /Mouse.html

Re:Test for side-effects

[mrjb]

Before pushing the longevity drug, please make sure that it does not make the user infertile.
Actually, after a certain age, that might be a desireable side effect.

Why?

[Max Romantschuk]

I see the obvious scientific benefits in research like this. What I don't see is if we really would like to live much longer. I for one feel that imortality would be more of a curse than a blessing. Thoughts?

Then again, if we get hints on dementia and other comparable illnesses I'm all for it!

Re:Why?

[Eponymous Cowboy]

The need for immortality is obvious. Given an infinite lifespan--with all of its infinite possibilities--there will finally be a non-zero probability that the average Slashdot reader will be able to lose his virginity.

Re:Why?

[LeoDV]

I think we tell ourselves that immortality would be a curse to make ourselves feel better about not having it. Think about it, it takes years, maybe even a lifetime, to know just a big city, or a country. If you were to go backpacking round the world, without paying heed to the time passing (and for good reason), by the time you'd make it back to where you started, everything will have changed so much you could as well go round again.

And if you get tired of that, it'd take at least a few centuries to read all the great literature, watch all the great movies, listen to all the great music... There is so much humanity produced and is producing, that not only is a lifetime not enough, but probably not even eternity. Entropy would take its toll on you before you'd be done with everything you had wanted to do.

Re:Why?

[pubjames]

I for one feel that imortality would be more of a curse than a blessing. Thoughts?

My take on this is that people who fear death are often those that don't make full use of the life they have. People that live full and rich lives don't fear death.

There is a memorable scene in a classic old movie, The Man Who Would Be King with Michael Caine and Sean Connery. Facing death due to an avalanche in the Himalayas, one turns to the other and says something like "we may have lived half the time of most men, but we've lived twice the life". Thus, they face death with humour and with their heads held high, without regret or worry.

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.

Re:Why?

[Gyan]

Except that the novelty would wear out.

After I've completely known 100 cities, the 101st would be a drag, despite it being a new experience. You'll have learnt enough to see the 101st city as just another instance with different specifics. After reading 10001 books, you will start predicting plots and other elements of literature much better. There won't be much excitement of anticipation left. The root behind all this would be that since you've lived for centuries/millenia, your understanding of human behaviour would be sufficiently mature to dull the curiousity related to the fruits of human creativity.

Re:Why?

[Jugalator]

... unless he is occupied with playing Duke Nukem Forever all the time.

Re:Why?

[4of12]

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,

"I wouldn't keep chickens in the conditions of some of those places."

Really an Award for Best Ear Transplant Technique

[Eponymous Cowboy]

From the Methuselah Mouse FAQ on how they will prove the mice are as old as is claimed:

Our approach is to use special identification tags. ... attached to the ear in such a way that they cannot be undetectably re-attached after breakage, so it is impossible to attach one to a younger mouse.

Obviously, therefore, the way to win this contest is to develop a way to successfully transplant mouse ears without leaving a noticeable scar.

Out of the IBM support database

[Anonymous Coward]

ESD PRODUCT SERVICE SUPPORT SUBJECT:NEW RETAIN TIP

Record number: H031944
Device: D/T8550
Model: M
Hit count: UHC00000
Success count: USC00000
Publication code: PC50
Tip key: 025
Date created: O89/02/14
Date last altered: A89/02/15
Owning B.U.: USA

Abstract: MOUSE BALLS NOW AVAILABLE AS FRU (Field Replaceable Unit)

TEXT:

Mouse balls are now available as a FRU. If a mouse fails to operate,or should perform erratically, it may be in need of ball replacement. Because of the delicate nature of this procedure, replacement of mouse balls should be attempted by trained personnel only.

Before ordering,determine type of mouse balls required by examining the underside of each mouse. Domestic balls will be larger and harder than foreign balls. Ball removal procedures differ,depending upon manufacturer of the mouse. Foreign balls can be replaced using the pop-off method, and domestic balls replaced using the twist-off method. Mouse balls are not usually static sensitive, however, excessive handling can result in sudden discharge. Upon completion of ball replacement, the mouse may be used immediately.

It is recommended that each servicer have a pair of balls for maintaining optimum customer satisfaction,and that any customer missing his balls should suspect local personnel of removing these necessary functional items.

P/N33F8462--DOMESTIC MOUSE BALLS
P/N33F8461--FOREIGN MOUSE BALLS

Re:Out of the IBM support database

[rjch]

...I firmly believe that this (extremely) old joke probably contributed more than anything to the invention of the optical mouse...

Don't need genetically altered food

[Moderation abuser]

The world is more than able to feed itself with current crops.

The problem is political instability; wars, local conflicts, corruption, ethnic genocide etc etc. If there were stable governments everywhere using conventional crops, starvation would be eliminated completely.

Genetically modified crops will make absolutely no difference to famines because yield is not the problem.

Re:Don't need genetically altered food

[Walkiry]

>>The problem is political instability

And one way GM foods can help solve that is by allowing crops to grow in less favourable conditions. All that instability is, at the end of the day, just a hinderance to distribution. If we can make it easier to better grow crops locally, so much the better.

Also GM food can help in some other ways. You might have heard about the Golden Rice, a variety of rice that contains a high amount of A-vitamin and could be a great help to prevent its deficiency (which is quite a bit of a problem in many areas of Africa and South-East Asia).

We might not need it per se, but it sure is a nifty and useful tool to more easily solve certain problems.

Re:Test for side-effects

[ameoba]

Actually, a much better idea would be to make the user infertile UNTIL a specified age. I'm just turning 25 and I'd love to be sterile for the next 5yr, as long as it was trivially reversible.

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.

Re:Works by maintaining/increasing telomere length

[Dr. Manhattan]

Telomeres are not the 'secret' of immortality. There are a lot of things that gradually wear down or accumulate in the human body (e.g. heavy metals) that cannot be dealth with by normal metabolic function, even in youthful bodies.

Real immortatlity is going to require active, artificial repair and maintenance systems.

Re:What about Mickey Mouse?

[richie2000]

Yes, he probably does. And if he doesn't, it's just a matter of time since congress just keep adding years to his economical life...

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!

Re:This is the kind of research I like to see.

[evrybodygonsurfin]

It's like the absurdity of cancer therapies that can't be tried on terminally patients because they might have side effects.

Insightful point indeed. Presumably you make this from the perspective of someone who has watched a loved one suffering from terminal cancer be pumped full of toxic chemicals to the very limit of their mortal capabilities and then subjected to near-fatal doses of radiation in an attempt to lengthen their existance?

Given these circumstances, it is baffling that patients aren't queuing up to be guniea-pigs for the less `conservative' experimental therapies.

Re:This is the kind of research I like to see.

[bundaegi]

Keywords are palliative treatment, quality of life.
Need to be balanced with patient's choice (or their relatives?) but if the prognosis is bleak then maybe it's more important to spend quality time with your loved ones rather than enduring agressive treatment that's not going to be effective anyway.

Oh yeah... trials on terminal patients. Maybe people like grandparent (and those who modded him up) don't see the ethical issues involved. Sad it came from somebody involved in bioinformatics. Don't you guys have any philosophy lectures anymore? even basic stuff?
Simply put, what next? you are given permission to start trials on patients who are going to die after all, then what? trials on prisoners? soldiers? random population sample? Thinking about it, it's not like this hasn't been tried before...

Re:This is the kind of research I like to see.

[kinnell]

So what's the worse things that's going to happen?

A giant, carniverous, mutant super mouse, bent on world domination and the enslavement of the human race to work in it's underground cheese mines.

Re:This is the kind of research I like to see.

[Hittite Creosote]

So what's the worse things that's going to happen? A dead lab rat?

They might take your budget away for showing that you didn't really have a clue about biology? They aren't a magic wand. Take stem cell treatment for hearts for example - you have to have highly specific growth conditions in the laboratory culturure dishes to coax stem cells into developing as vascular cells. They're not just going to have a look round and think 'when in the heart, do as the heart cells do'.

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.

what about this genius?

[Unominous Coward]

Does it count?

How about this apple mouse?

any technique ?

[selderrr]

Researchers can use any technique to boost longevity

Flash freezing ?

Re:any technique ?

[Hittite Creosote]

Freezing the mouse is easy. Getting it to go for a walk after you've defrosted it is a little more problematical. I think they'd want to see it move before they'd give you the money.

Re:Methuselah Joke

[watzinaneihm]

No. Snopes says its true. But even IBM meant it as a joke.

Re:How about NOT experimenting on them for a while

[Maddog Batty]

That would seem to help with your average lab rat's life expectancy...

Unfortunately not. Half starving them does seem to improve life expectancy.

dogs monkeys

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

The Oldest Mouse Contest

[NanoGator]

"On your mark... Get set.... age!"

Because

[varjag]

What I don't see is if we really would like to live much longer. I for one feel that imortality would be more of a curse than a blessing.

One nice thing of immortality is that you always can opt-out.

Seriously, I don't mind living a spare century or two. YMMV, of course.

Mouse Howard Foundation?

[island_earth]

The hidden party behind the experiment was clearly a wealthy mouse who found himself dying young, and started this contest as a way to extend mouse lives. Now, members of the experiment just need a way to get in touch with each other...

"Ears are short."

"But tails are long..."

"Not 'while the evil D-Con comes not'"

Re:150 human years?

[Kjella]

Take average human lifespan and divide by average cat/dog/mouse lifespan. That is the factor, nothing more, nothing less. Ok maybe somebody made that guesstimate into an "official" factor, but I couldn't really care who did that.

Kjella

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. :^)

Oh, please.

[Dr. Manhattan]

Except that the novelty would wear out.

Tell you what. After I've stood on an airless planetoid in the Lesser Magellanic Cloud, and watched the Milky Way rise over its horizon, then you can ask me if I've seen everything worth seeing.

The root behind all this would be that since you've lived for centuries/millenia, your understanding of human behaviour would be sufficiently mature to dull the curiousity related to the fruits of human creativity.

So, a citizen of the Roman Empire circa 0 A.D. wouldn't be a bit surprised at the world of 2003? In any sphere; not just science, but art, politics, culture, etc.?

Just because you can't imagine that genuinely new things will come up...

It's analogous to a TTL field in a packet.

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

If a packet gets routed too many times, it's probably a loop. The TTL field gets decremented on each hop and the packet dies when it reaches 0.

If a cell divides too many times, it's probably cancerous (if it's not a reproductive cell), the telemores get shortened on each division, and the cell goes senescent when they're gone.

This is the mechanism behind the "Hayflick Limit" (q.v.). Last I read, nobody including Dr. Hayflick was sure how much this phenomenon had to do with real-life aging.

Playing God with mice and men.

[fishnuts]

Most people would call me an atheist, because I don't believe in a supreme entity whom has complete power over us and our world, but I just realized something.
We are God.
We've already stopped our own evolution. Before we developed the ability to heal ourselves, kill off or obsolete our only natural predators and shield ourselves from any natural threat, we were HAPPY to live to a ripe age of 30-40 years. It was plenty of time to raise a family and pass on our general knowledge of our simple little world.

200 years ago, we didn't know what cancer was. Not because we had no way to SEE it or diagnose it, but because it simply didn't happen (short of the very low rates of actual cancer manifestations.) When someone got sick from a terminal disease, it was just accepted as a fact of life, and those people became a statistic of Darwin's laws.

Now, people with congenital diseases (or diseases inherited from parents, or combinations of parents' genes which give the child a high predisposition for a disease) are surviving longer AND reproducing, causing such diseases and predispositions to prosper. On the other side of the same coin, we're weakening our species' immunities to congestive diseases by artificially suppressing and preventing them with medicine.

Biomedical engineering is also causing as much harm as good. Sure, we've eliminated many Really Bad Diseases. But now there are mutated versions of the same diseases (viral and bacterial) that survived our initial campaigns to eliminate them, which have proven to be much more resistant to our medicines and techniques. Virii and bacteria are still evolving, and there's nothing WE can do to stop that. It's only going to get worse.

Don't get me wrong here. I'm happy and extremely grateful to live a longer, healthier, and safer life than my predecessors. But we're taking this whole "Live Longer!" thing to an extreme that will only be detrimental in the long run. In fact, overpopulation is one of the immediately obvious effects of this. Why are we spending billions and billions of dollars and as many man hours every year, intentionally extending the lifespan of our individuals, instead of the collective species?

God (the one that most people in the world pray to) NEVER intended us to live this long. If God exists, I believe cancer, AIDS, SARS, and Osama bin Laden (sorry, couldn't resist :) are simply His latest attempts to curb the population problem that we've initiated.

Creating 'super mice' might be a great novelty at first, and a boon to science, but what we learn from them certainly wont benefit our species. Just ourselves. Seems a bit selfish, ignoring the decline in quality of life many generations in the future will be faced with.

(Yes, I'm playing the devil's advocate here, but it's a point I REALLY wish more people would consider)

Re:Playing God with mice and men.

[register_ax]

We are God.

Sorry, but I don't think you can tell people this. People progress through states of mind that allow more "intense" realizations to occur. A primitive tribe is extremely hesitant to outsiders because of the overwhelming amount of change they introduce. It takes an extremely open mind to allow such a transition. That needs to be broken down first, so, how?

Questions. People need to be able to construct internal dialog or at least intelligent dialog between others. The important thing is being able to answer your own questions. This creates double the amount of work. Not only are you doubting "stuff", but you are trying to figure out that same "stuff" you're doubting.

Hence, introduce only things you believe your intended audience is ready to hear. Posting on /. more than likely fulfills that, but keep in mind when discussing such things in the real life(tm). ;)

Why are we spending billions and billions of dollars and as many man hours every year, intentionally extending the lifespan of our individuals, instead of the collective species?

Creating 'super mice' might be a great novelty at first, and a boon to science, but what we learn from them certainly wont benefit our species. Just ourselves. Seems a bit selfish, ignoring the decline in quality of life many generations in the future will be faced with.

These questions are extremely short-sighted. We extend lifespans indefinitely everyday; heart, liver, and kidney transplants, immunizations (preventive measure), vaccinations, CPR, blood transfusions, diabetic shots, or even those daily vitamins you take. All are either directly, or indirectly extending your life. It's easier to see the benefit of swapping organs when your's fails to operate properly, but all those other things are more of thinking in advance. You know of another life extension tip? Eat balanced diets and exercise. Holy shit! That may as well just save your life from tragic organ failures and cause you victim of brain disease. You see my point? If you are just going to die anyway why take the further preventive measure?

By spending money on life extension, we are really understanding just more about the body. What is cancer? An abnormal cell. Why does that cell become abnormal? Well, what happens is we get a broader understanding of what is really going on. That is what I wish more people understood, knowledge is interconnected in ways we can't even imagine. If it were any other way, it would be just one person coming up with all the solutions to life.

This is getting involved, but try and think of Leonardo da Vinci. This man is a pivotal subject in my theory. His quest was for knowledge. What may come of interest is he was just as wary of the whole "blood thing" as anyone else. He insisted that it is paramount to disregard this discomfort if you ever truly wanted to understand anatomy. For the obvious few who are aware of his works, one might want to pickup Leonardo: The Artist and the Man by Dover books. Note that Dover books are excellent books, but typically only to get you thinking about a subject, not so much a reference volume.

Back on topic, and why do we extend these lives everyday. To improve the collective well-being of all involved with that person. Just think of the web of relationships that individuals are usually enroped (is that a word) to. Continuing that one life is adding value to easily a hundred lives. That value may even be small keeping in mind I am thinking of second-order persons as well. You can't limit the effect of one person's death on just those directly affected by it. It should be easy to see that the creation of "good" is a worthwhile cause. Keep in mind the int