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Geneticists Claim Aging Breakthrough
Quirk writes "The Science section of The Guardian is reporting on recent experiments by geneticists 'to unlock the secrets of the aging process has created organisms that live six times their usual lifespan, raising hopes that it might be possible to slow ageing in humans.' 'In the experiment, Dr Longo's team took yeast cells and knocked out two key genes, named Sir2 and SCH9. The latter governs the cells' ability to convert nutrients into energy. They found that instead of dying after a week, the cells lived for up to six weeks.''Research has now begun to test whether the effect works in mice.' So it looks like we might soon have near immortal, fearless mice."
I am Mickey McMouse of the clan McMouse, and I am immortal.
didn't they find the secret of aging in worms some while ago?
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
We have cells already that are not governed by the normal life/death cell cycle. It's called CANCER. Cancer cells have autononmous growth and multiply indefinitely.
sig here
i know exactly when these amazing age-related breakthroughs will come to fruition for humanity
exactly at the age at which i am too old to partake of any of it
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
..real crowded in the world if we're all immortal.
Unfortunately being fearless is going to cancel out immortality pretty quickly, when the mouse isn't scared of humans, or their traps...
Drag n' Drop DVD Recommendations
At this rate I'm never gonna get to sit at the big table on Thanksgiving
Where we can get fearless, immortal, FLYING mice, then I'll be excited.
Especially if they can also sing "Here I come to save the day."
That's "Mr. Soulless Automaton" to you, Bub.
Who wants to live forever?
This will give Brain time to take over the world!
Unless breakthroughs like this can improve the quality of life, it's a neat but ultimately worthless advance. Humans already life way longer than the length of time they're useful to society, and if we suddenly have people living 6 times as long but still degrading by 70-90, we're just going to sink even more quickly.
Now, humans living a few hundred years and staying able-bodied for most of it would be an incredible advance and would probably serve to benefit society, but... otherwise... I fear and do NOT welcome our new 400-year-old jello eating overlords.
"So it looks like we might soon have near immortal, fearless mice."
/. old stories results page for mice:
http://slashdot.org/search.pl?tid=&query=mice&auth or=&sort=1&op=stories
I think you meant immortal, fearless, singing, regenerating, plague-infected mice.
Can't be bothered pasting all the links, here's the link to the
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Mighty Mouse will save the day!!!
So... we just need to knock those Sir2 and SCH9 genes INTO the cancer cells and cancer will die off!
PATENT PENDING.
I for one welcome our fearless, near-immortal, rodent overlords.
(that wouldn't be Frankie and Benjie mouse, by an chance, would it?)
In Korea, only old people .. Ehm ...
Fearless imortal mice?!? Maybe my "wanna see my spaceship" pick up line will start working again!
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
this is a good idea why, now?
If this works (eventually) with humans, who will get access to it? How will we justify the use of this when so many people die very young from preventable causes that are beyond their control (as opposed to simply not taking care of oneself)? How will we prevent the extreme accumulation of wealth that this would allow if it is not equally accessible to everyone?
Helping with organizational effectiveness is our job.
I for one, welcome our fearless immortal rodent overlords.
There are old mice, and there are bold mice, but there are no old, bold mice
"All successful systems accumulate parasites" -- Hal Hixon
These latest annoucements of genetically engineered super-mice have me wodering if Douglas Adams had it right and we are all pawns to the super-intelligent mice that rule the earth. =D
So ninety would be like the new 20s?
The sad thing is- they wouldn't change the retirement age- and people would collect SS for 5/6th of their lifespan. The polticians wouldn't touch that hot potato. Our tax rates will be 80% of our income.
Bad news: for 500 of those years you have to wear diapers and are senile
Gee it sounds like a dream come true.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
It's a huge jump to say that a single-celled fungi's life can be improved to saying it can also be done for a mammal with thousands of different kinds of cells and billions of cells in total. A lot of our physiology actually relies on cells having a short lifetime. I doubt those mice will even live one day.
"Pinky, are you thinking what I'm thinking?"
"I think I am, Brain, but wherever are we going to find cool whip and rubber shorts at this hour?"
Like the subject title says, this study was done on yeast, not mice. And while it's a cool study and there are homologs between yeast and humans, don't expect 6 fold life span improvements in humans anytime soon.
So if we can extend the average lifespan 6X, given that it currently sites close to 75 years old, in 450 years, the world population, if it doesn't keep growing (which it is) will be 36 billion? Just what we need in 450 years, 6 billion 300 year olds. And you think some elderly slow up the line now ;)
KeepTrackOfIt.com - Find the lowest gas prices in your area graphically
without waxing too poetic, life isn't about accumulating more moments, it's about investing the ones we have with as much quality as possible. life is short, but beautiful on account...if we had lifespans that measured on the geologic scale (or any scale much beyond the one we have present), the individual choices we make become less and less meaningful. quality over quantity, as always...
I hope they don't escape.
John Lennon could still be alive today if he was a mouse.
Great news if you're a yeast cell and like having a sluggish metabolism, though!
Science is really neat, and all that... but sometimes, I swear, scientists don't think of the repurcussions of their actions. Do they take into consideration food consumption? Living space? Energy requirements? Don't get me wrong, I'm no hippy... but I can see some serious harm coming from this.
If this were some drug that were only given out to our brightest minds, I'd be all for it. But if something like this is actually applied to the population, en-mass, the end result will be catastrophic.
Just my $0.02... maybe the rest of you aren't so cynical.
/dev/random
There are ALOT of social problems which will come out of extreme human longevity. It seems to me that a good read of Kim Stanely Robinson http://www.kimstanleyrobinson.net/ would be in order long before something like this has human applications.
One of the things you can count on in life is that [insert greedy, cruel tyrant/dictator's name here] will die eventually, just like the rest of us.
So what happens when they can use their money to hang around for another 500 years?
How would your typical impovershed (sp?) 3rd world country deal with a 500 year reign of terror?
Hmmm all we need to is to get be able to clone humans in a reduced period of time and train them constantly in war tatics and we can have our very own imperial troopers.
The fear gene makes sure they stay alive.
The aging gene makes sure they die eventually.
If you turn both off you just get a dumb mouse that dies to stupidity instead of old age.
Longevity will provide the next inflection point of human capacity and progress. Imagine if the great people of science could continue to contribute and innovate for the equivalent of several lifetimes. Gauss was the last mathematician who was said to be able to be conversant with the entire spectrum of mathematics. Currently it takes a human a decade to two just to be abreast of a specific field of science to be able to make any significant contributions. The period of time available to advance our understanding is getting shorter and shorter due to increase in the body of knowledge and our limited life times.
I know there will be the crowd that says - but we were designed to die. That is bunk! Self aware intelligence is bound and destined to perpetuated and proliferate.
And soon our scientists will say stuffs like... Wernstrom: "Face it, Farnsworth, you're over the hill. It's time to leave science to the hundred-twenty-year-olds." Farnsworth: "You young turks think you know everything! I was inventing things when you were barely turning senile." Wernstrom: "Haha! Go home before you embarrass yourself, old man! Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to take a nap before the ceremonies."
Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence at my university have been going on about stuff like this for a while. Personally I think it's all science fiction but hey...
Here's a simple way to increase your lifespan. Eat less. In fact, halve the amount of food you eat.
There are papers that you can search for with sciencedirect.com or scholar.google.com that show rats that are given half the calories of the control group living almost 50% longer. It's just not exactly something that you can sell to people. You can live longer, if you live LESS. There's a reason animals that live very long lives have very slow metabolisms (such as Turtles) and animals that have very high metabolisms live less (such as humming birds and mice). To put it simply, you can 'burn the midnight oil' and live a short life, or eat less and do less and live longer.
Putting it more complicatedly, the reason you age is generally regarded to be because of damage your body and cells accumulate over a lifetime of living. The damage often comes from 'Oxidative stress'. This is just a very broad umbrella term for anything that causes the generation of 'Reactive oxygen species' that are highly reactive molecules that zip about your cell damaging proteins and DNA. ROS are made by things such as too much Vitamin K, smoking, UV light or certain other radiation bands, too much iron in the diet, and so on.
And the biggest contributor to ROS in your body over it's life? The Mitochondria. The 'power plant' of each cell. It makes ROS as a part of the process used to make ATP (the 'batteries' of your cells) and inevitably some escapes and causes damage. Over a life-time the damage builds up.
The biggest contributor to ageing is just plain old living (kind of obvious really), and the best way to therefore cut down on that damage is to eat less, slowing down the metabolism and decreasing the amount of ROS the mitochondria produces.
IMHO, not really worth it! you could get hit by a bus tomorrow! Dig into your fresh Chiabatta and Fetta cheese!
People have known for a long time that starving organisms and individual cells promotes long life. Likely there's a bunch of things going on, from reduction in oxidation damage of the cell to the cell expressing genes to cope with the minimal amount of nutrients it's able to process.
A good analogy is that the cells go into a "hibernation" of sorts, not doing much, but not dying either. I suspect that some sort of drug may come out of this, but it'll likely have the side effect of people wanting to sit around and not do much as their cells are starved of energy. Not a big change for some of you, I realize, but there's always a price to be paid for these sorts of things.
Same mice talk smack about busting a cap in duke nukems ass.
. . . to cull the herd. This will encourage people to stay fit and get home at a decent hour.
Or maybe getting anti-aging drugs will require a survey of your friends and neighbors.
If you flunk, or no one returns the survey, you don't get boosterspice, because who needs a bunch of old, unpopular jerks hanging around?
I have two problems with this:
1) I'd be worried what those genes did that they knocked out. I mean, I don't want to live six times longer and be impotent the whole time.
2) There are a lot of asshats I don't want to live six times longer. The really scary thing is I'm related to some of them.
Anonymous Cowards suck.
Dr Longo doesn't work for Umbrella Corp. does he?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umbrella_Corporation
Am no fek Buddhist, but this is enlightenment.
Fearless, immortal mice break you!
stop exploiting mice for your crackpot bullshit. this is stupid and needs to end.
This is all a ploy by Disney to justify keeping Micky under copy-wraps for 600 years.
...or maybe not.
crap. So because of my high metabolism, I may not be able to put on weight, but I'm going to die by 40.
You just can't win!
--- I used to moderate, then I read the -1 articles and decided having to filter through them was not worth it.
At the current population's growth rate, we're already filling the planet with 83.3 million more people every year. That's almost 3 people every second. Think about that.
Now, think about the kinds of overcrowding that places like India and China enjoy.
Do you *really* want people to live longer?
In the time it took me to write this, another 200 people just started breathing your air and eating your food. By the time this thread works down off the front page, about 40,000 people will have appeared to take your jobs.
I'm thinking that living longer is NOT a good thing unless it also comes with an anti-fertility side-effect.
So they make mice not able to metabolize food (ie. starve) and make thier cells too stupid to die on cue (ie cancer) and this is a good thing? We know that starving people live a long time (see URL:http://www.webmd.com/content/article/110/10981 8.htm ) but are they LIVING? or existing? I'll take living any day.
Trouble, a mistake or fun, your choice
Is that why all those starving people in Africa all live to be 180 years old?
No, this won't increase lifespan in a human. Yet another rat study that failed to translate into human data. Oxidative stress is one factor amongst many. To say aging is complex is an understatement.
I think the mice that had some fear would be more immortal than the mice that were fearless. Now, the fearless solider mice are the ones that you'd want to send biting lions and tigers to death while most of your immortal peasant mice run way because they are scared.
Unless these scientists find a way to make humans less fertile, planet earth is gonna get ugly crowded.
Shouldnt that also mean that lots of vitamin C, vitamin E and catalase in the diet would increase your lifespan? If I recall correctly these are the major substances involved in neutralizing ROS.
Only old mice are fearless.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
You really gotta wonder where peoples morals and beliefs will end, and where the primal human instinct to survive and reproduce as much as possible will kick in and make them cave.
Also, with the worlds changing view of the acceptance of plastic surgery, will it become more normal to receive it if you were to get life extension gene therapy? I mean, whats the point of living to be 300 if you're in a withered old husk that scares even old people.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
This is based on the assumption that a state of stasis with regards to aging is possible. If you simply elongate life, wouldn't you elongate the period a person is infirmed before they ultimately die? Seems kind of cruel to me in a way - and costly.
How does the mental age scale with elongating physical age? Did this process increase the time it takes to reach sexual maturity? That's what I would like to know. Extending the process of reaching mental matury might greatly increase the amount of knowledge children can acquire during their impressionable years.
I'm not so sure this would be a good idea for use on humans. As it is, we are right on the very edge of how many people our planet can support combined with our technological advancements. If we suddenly had the ability to live 400 years and could all procreate for 250-300 years of that, we might find ourselves having to impliment a Logan's Run system to prevent our own extinction.
8==8 Bones 8==8
I thought that said "Rome couldn't be snacked in a day."
The overcrowding of Earth will give us a better reason to go into space and stretch out a little bit! This could make dating, child rearing pretty interesting too, because since you will age at 1/6th the rate, You'd have the body of a 1 year old child, but the knowledge of a 6 year old, while not much, that's gotta make you think, you have the knowledge that someone 18 or 30 would have and your body is 3 or 5 years old(Yes, I'm using solid numbers because I'm lazy). Dating would get interesting too, "So, how old are you?" -"108". Puberty too! You don't to have to go through that again....only 6 times longer! The pregnancy period for a woman, will it be 54 months now?! Mind boggling...
Scientist: "Hello! I'm Dr. Longo! I broke the secret of aging!"
Colleague: "Bill, I've known you for thirty years. Your last name is Rosenberg!"
Scientist: "That's the name MORTALS gave me! From now on I'm 'Dr. LONGo!'"
Calorie restriction only works with adequate, or better yet, optimal nutrition. Even if you're eating 50% of your normal calories you still have to get 100% of all the required nutrients. Starving yourself it just a good way to die sooner.
Actually, removal of this gene only helps those who are on this extreme diet. Animals that lack this gene react even better to the stress caused by not eating as much food. Having this gene prevents you from entering that state, caused by undereating, where your body becomes much more effective at healing genetic and other damage.
Ewige Blumenkraft.
Hmm. Maybe someone will figure out that Methuselah and all those other guys had this gene and that it has evolved out of us? (It could make for an interesting bit in the biblical-inerrancy/evolution flame wars, anyway.)
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell
Puberty would last six times as long as well i suppose...
I'm not sure I could deal with that.
eleven plus two / twelve plus one
Unfortunately being fearless is going to cancel out immortality pretty quickly, when the mouse isn't scared of humans, or their traps...
:D
LEMMINGS!
At the rate at which we are currently overpopulating the earth and draining her resources this could cause problems beyond conception. The shortage of food, natural resources, health care, housing, just to name a few of the most obvious.
Karma: a simple way of silencing those with unpopular views regardless how correct or just that view might be.
welcome our new near-immortal, fearless mouse overlords!
I submitted this same story, but to a different link. So I am taking this opportunity to call the dupe that will happen when my story gets accepted. Lets see if I'm right.
"In the game of life, someone always has to lose. To me, if life were fair, that someone would always be Oklahoma." -DKR
Time to buy stock in Kimberly-Clark!
I for one welcome our immortal fearless mice overlords and would like to remind them that as a trusted TV personality i can help gathet others to toil in there underground helium mines
:P
sorry it had to be done
I do welcome progress in this kind of research, but I like to ask if we, the people who live now, are going to see the benefits. Even if we knew exactly which genes are responsible for certain tasks, it would still be very difficult to reprogram all genes in a body. The most effective virii cannot affect all cells in a body. Not to mention the matter of decomposition which still has to be addressed for complex lifeforms. Anyway, although I may not benefit completely from this research, I am sure this research will be an asset for humans. Let's hope we learn to share the benefits. Otherwise we will have wars not just for water, oil and money.
i know exactly when these amazing age-related breakthroughs will come to fruition for humanity
exactly at the age at which i am too old to partake of any of it
That's not really a joke.
People in government see anti-aging research and treatments in terms of the financial load on the retirement and medical infrastructure relative to the tax base of still-working young, and view improved treatments as extending the life of the infirm aged rather than extending productive, vigorous youth. As a result they tend to be opposed to such research, or in favor of rationing its fruits if it ever has any.
(I recall back in the early days of CNN, when the head of one of the government agencies was being live-interviewed on future solvency issues as the boomers retired, and he slipped and said "We have to get the death rate up to meet the birthrate." Guess what part got clipped from the replay a few hours later...)
Life-extension advocates, of course, point out that real breakthroughs will extend healthy, vigorous life rather than simply stretching senility - and might eventually eliminate the latter entirely. Thus an effective attack on aging would reduce, rather than increase, the load on the systems (once they were adjusted for the increased lifespan).
You'll notice that a significant fraction of The Fine Article is dedicated to heading off such short-sightedness on the part of the portion of the ruling class that will be dispensing grant money and regulating availability of any treatments.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
We have enough youth, how about a fountain of smart?
Imagine , 2000 relatives....
50000 grand children
Chances of having sex or marrying a relative, (if your 280 and have a 22 yo girl friend, thats your 4th cousins daughter)
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
I for one welcome our new furry overlords.
A few months ago there was an article about mice that could regrow limbs/organs (except brain) without scar tissue, whole joints could be regrown, even nerves, this is potentially a cure for so many things.. blindness, paralysis, burn victums, to name a few
So now we have fearless regenerative immortal rats!!
No no, see, it's a very elaborate plot. This kind of treatment will only be available to the very rich. They'll pay through the nose for it. And then, when they're immortal, the state can tax them, for a very, very long time, thus taking away all of their money.
No matter how many superhuman abilities mice gain, study after study has proven that everything gives them cancer. So if they want their precious chemotherapy, they'll have to work for me! Mwhahahaha!
Does this rag smell like chloroform to you?
You are so right. Just change the old adage a bit. There will be no old brave mice.
There has to be some balance. Science fiction writers have grappled with this problem. If people lived to 200, society would change a lot. Right now, you have a certain chance of dying in a traffic accident (you probably won't). If your natural life span extended to 200 then you would evaluate the chances of dying in a traffic accident quite differently (it would be three times as likely). Your behaviour would change. People's lives would span several economic cycles. If you had experienced the great depression, you would vote quite differently. (Mind you, we have lots of people who remember Viet Nam and we still invaded Iraq.)
If having a bunch of old fogies around meant that society would become set in its ways and unwilling to take chances, that would bring about our ruin. We have to innovate to survive. We might well need the antiaging gene and the courage gene both in order for society to remain successful.
I for one welcome our old, fearless, cheese-eating overlords.
Oh, wait...we already have those. Nevermind.
Repeal helmet laws!
You can't take the sky from me...
would you really want to live forever?
At least according to what I've heard. That's because people are living longer and more productively.
Why should a fully functional adult be expected to retire because of an arbitrary time? The original purpose of retirement age was helping support people that could no longer support themselves.
No! It's a *SIG*. Keep the Special Interest Groups away! (Con joke!)
That's good. Is just the time I need to see Italy finally win its 4th soccer world cup. Or maybe I need 7 lives...
Computer Games
...who feels no particular inclination to extend his natural life?
Don't get me wrong... I'm having a pretty good time and feeling productive, but I'm only 28 and already, I find myself thinking, "OMFG this is long." The thought of living to 500 seems so frightfully tedious and, after a while, too repetitive to be enjoyable. How many new experiences are there to have after you've gotten married, had children, enjoyed grandchildren, traveled, educated yourself, worked, etc? It seems that this sequence fits perfectly into the current 80 or so years that we have. To stretch it out over 500 years sounds frightfully dull.
Then again, I'm one of those weird bastards who disbelieves in afterlife and takes great comfort in the belief that one day, I will entirely cease to exist. The thought of eternal existence sounds horrifying.
It's gonna get real crowded in the world if we're all immortal.
Don't worry, we'll just kill each other like we did before. Or go into stasis.I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
if you grew up in a hard-core strict biblical creationist family like I did, you might be familiar with the "water curtain" nonsense.
Here it goes:
pre-flood there was no water on the earth.. it was all below the surface and... get this folks... above the atmosphere in a great belt called the "water curtain"
methuselah and the other ancient patriarchs lived during this time when the water curtain filtered out cosmic rays and UV radiation that create the free radicals which we now know are the main cause of aging.
I know it's true! Some guy who read a book by some guy who read a book by some guy who read the bible told me so!!
QED
to get in on human testing before they raise the retirement age.
... what did you expect, something profound?
Look at it this way: If your own Mother and Father could have seen their lifetimes in a crystal ball at a young age, would they have wanted to see how their lives played out?
My Father went through a horrible war, alcoholism, a couple of extra wives, business successes, yes, but then ultimate failure. My Mother had a lonely, poverty stricken life, only to die of cancer, a terrible death. No, they would not want to see that ahead of time.
How then are you different. Are you going to live a wonderful life, full of exciting suprises of the sports-car, beautiful women and expensive playthings kind?
You don't want to know the truth, what the future holds.
Why then, would we want to alter the lifespan and have humans live many times longer than now? Would they not have accumulated enough sins and mistakes over a hundred and fifty years or so of life that they would be begging for the grave?
The only way is to alter what Man is, so he/she cannot feel the mental pain for a life of
mistakes as many do now when they are old. I know of two men who ended their own lives rather than go on, be placed in a hospital for what years they had left, to sit there waiting for the end, remembering those lifetime experiences that now are too hard to bear.
When we are young, we are full of bravery, and that protects us. Then, when you are old, you no longer are capable of the fearlessness that makes a young person strong, and you become afraid. It is not right to prolong that for many decades, without additional alteration of what makes men and women what they are.
I, for one, welcome our new super-intelligent, pan-dimensional overlords.
Just cause you feel it doesn't mean it's there.
So, somatic cell nuclear transfer cloning works because we put embryos in a starved state.
Life extension now is also coming about because we are entering a starved state. At a lecture in a conference on complexity by NECSI (http://www.necsi.org/ a few years back there was also a correlation on multiple generations of fruit flies they longer they deferred having offspring the longer they will live.
We do have a lot more to learn here, between starvation of food and sex to gain increased longevity.
Is there anything other than the 'starvation' angle that will help us break new ground?
Sure, sounds good on paper... but good intentions lead to bad consequences.
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. -Benjamin Franklin
OK, great, we might someday live six times longer. However, wouldn't we be six times dumber because of it? I don't want to see the first Hegemon and Polemarch elected as an old idiot with the body of a 30-year old.
i'm 234 years old
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
With topics such as euthanasia and questions like "quality of life" today.. I'm wondering who would want to live that long? Unless there was some serious break through in actually staying younger longer rather than living longer.. I'm wondering how long life would actually benefit people.
Don't take this as an ID arguement.. but it seems like death has more too it than.... death. Heck.. I don't want to be an old feeble man..
How well can you live at 300 years old?
I struck me: If it is aging...how can it be a breakthrough
Evolution got us here and now it's to be shunned?
Humans are heat engines and they put off greenhouse gas (CO2, Methane, hot air, this post). More of that is more of the same.
I estimate 90% of the population is only seeking a more comfortable, entertaining and assisted life. So extended lifespans mean more time to consume, watch tv and go muddin in your SUV, oh and I forgot, blaming George.
More time for the rich to get richer.
"No, I dont have a firearm, I just got these: Action Bills." -- Happy Time Harry
Autonomous Retard -- Is your camp safe? UnsafeCamp.com
In other news.... genetically modified lab mice that live up to six times longer have escaped..
It is assumed that due to cell longevity, these rats are stronger than the average rats and have already started mating with the sewer rats. Soon the whole of London will be overrun will rats.
Oh My goodnesss... Save the Queen..
Drat, already been done.
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
Hey! Don't forget about their newly acquired ability to REGENERATE too!
http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/comments/tales
Soon you'll never be able to get these vampire mice out of your house.
They can't be stopped and I think it's all being orchestrated by the greedy mouse trap company cartels.
>Dr Longo's team took yeast cells and knocked out two key genes
Forget the mice. I want to brew with that Yeast Of Immortality. What better vector for gene therapy than a nice cold pint?
--- Attorneys Assisting Citizen-Soldiers & Families -
Why are we even pursuing anti-aging research? The cycle of birth and death and rebirth is literally what drives evolution and in turn life on earth. I sincerely hope this, or any other "breakthroughs", never lead to unnatural life extension beyond what can be obtained through sanitation improvements, exercise, diet, and improvements in mental health. Once we go down that route we're playing with natural forces that should not be meddled with.
I do like programming things that work super quickly, especially when they work super quickly, super quickly.
"By blocking the gene, the cells were essentially tricked into believing food was scarce and switched them into a survival mode."
While technically the cells may have "lived" for longer, surviving in a comatose state is not my idea of living.
I, for one, welcome our really old, "don't fuck with me" rodent overlords.
The three most important words in a relationship are "I love you." The two most important are "Humor me."
would spin in his grave, if he had one :-)
....
Seriously, though. Heinlein argues that the first anti-geriatric treatment would be blood grown in-vitro. Recall story a few days ago about blood grown from skin cells? Now this stuff plus advances in cloning. Immortality in 3, 2, 1
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I asked a friend of mine in the insurance industry once how long people would live if we eliminated all natural causes. He said given current accident rates, people would live on average about 800 years. I do wonder if a lifespan was 800 years on average, we might be more careful, but I doubt it. If you think about it, this number means that roughly 1 in 10 people die in accidents over the course of a lifetime. That sounds about right to me. As for people dying of diseases, I believe that most of the diseases associated with end of life are heavily related to aging itself, so many of the diseases you mention may be lessened or eliminated through extending lifespan.
Here's a simple way to increase your lifespan. Eat less. In fact, halve the amount of food you eat.
As another poster said, when doing caloric reduction you still need as much vitamins and minerals as when eating a "normal" amount of calories, and so you need to be very selective about what you eat to get them all (vitamin supplements and such help, but don't have everything that some foods have).
More info here:
http://calorierestriction.org/
Tag lost or not installed.
It should read, "In other words, you'll be forced to invest in retirement homes weather you want to or not."
Joe Haldeman wrote an interesting novel, Buying Time , on just this topic. The premise of the novel is that scientists have indeed found a way to extend life indefinitely, ten years at a time (albeit in the rather crude manner of ripping you apart and putting you back together again)--but the cost of the treatment is your entire net worth, minimum one million pounds, which you're not allowed to give back to yourself afterwards. While the manner of treatment in the novel results in different answers than what may be reached from genetic research, it does address a number of issues, both scientific and societal, about lengthening life and the effects thereof.
Yours truly,
BewireNomali
un burrito me trampeó.
I hate to respond to my own post, but if you look at Hamster Havoc you will find that cmdTaco made a silly video in the summer of 96. I know that a hamster is different from a mouse, but their genetic structure is very, very similar.
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
Correct me if I am wrong, but you seem to have fallen for the misconception that SSI (Social Security INSURANCE) is SSR (Social Security RETIREMENT). This is why the system is failing. SSI was never intended to be a retirement plan. When they created it, they expected most people to die before recieving it, and the few that did recieve it would be on their death beds. They chose an age for simplicity, as picking a level of health would be very hard as to how old is too old work.
Now, I understand that we have a couple of generations that have been lead to believe that SSI is SSR, and it would be unfair to someone that has budgeted to retire next year, to suddenly tell them that they have another 10 years to go. But telling someone who is (like me) 35 that they won't recieve SSI until they are 75 instead of 65 really would be ok.
The solution would be to have a schedule where every 3 or 4 years, the age of SSI payout goes up by 1 year. This could go on until SSI becomes solvent.
This would allow SSI to be restored to its original purpose without completely screwing the population that has been allowed to misunderstand it's purpose.
Look people, we've all seen enough movies to know how this shiznit starts:
Scientists play around w/ Mother Nature, unlock "secret to immortality" and BAM!:
Night of the Living Dead!
I'mma stock up on my 8 gauge shells right now. YEEHAW!
I for one welcome our extremely aged and wise mouse overlords.
The present version of the "Shaper" movement is known as "Transhumanism". The modern day version of the "Mechanists" would be those who believe in the Ray Kurzweils, Verner Vinge (Singularity Sky) version of the future wherein artificial intelligence becomes integrated with and even exceeds Human Intelligence.
A bit about Transhumanism:: Transhumanism (sometimes abbreviated >H or H+) is an emergent philosophy analyzing or favouring the use of science and technology, especially neurotechnology, biotechnology, and nanotechnology, to overcome human limitations and improve the human condition.
...
Dr. Anders Sandberg describes modern transhumanism as "the philosophy that we can and should develop to higher levels, physically, mentally and socially using rational methods," while Dr. Robin Hanson describes it as "the idea that new technologies are likely to change the world so much in the next century or two that our descendants will in many ways no longer be 'human'."
you and your conspiracy theory view of government.
Which 'people in government' see whatever point you claim they see.
Your phrase is typical of either a person who is confused by adulthood or
a focus group monger who seeks to not report public opinion but create it.
That is not news but just marketing.
And so please stop thinking that all people in government think alike.
And which government because there are so many and so many different kinds?
Make your own grant, grant yourself freedom from this concept of 'ruling class'. That concept is a straight jacket that prevents you from realizing that we all rule. Liberty, baby. You are free so be free and stop blaming 'people in government'.
Maybe I shouldn't post this, doesn't matter it won't get any points because I am strickly
Anonymous
Research has now begun to test whether the effect works in mice. According to Dr Longo, lab mice bred with the equivalent gene knocked out appear to live longer, but are smaller, infertile and often suffer muscular defects, suggesting the gene is necessary for normal foetal development.
;)
hrmph. Sounds like the average geek to me
Your sig(k) has been stolen. There is a puff of smoke!
Just what we need :
....and a death rate of next to nothing.
6 billion people crammed on a planet, reproducing like rabits....
War will become just a method of controlling the population.
The Dutch will inherit the earth. If not, we'll settle for a bit of ocean. Beta delenda est!
Umm but what about our need to evolve. If we lengthen the life span generations will probably be a greater distance a part. As people will for the most part choose to wait longer to reproduce. We do evolve immunities to disease and their is speculation our brains are growing etc. I bet in some small way darwinism still is in effect for us. Healthy people are more likely to reporduce then those who are unhealthy. Now thats far from certain plenty of people whith malities do reproduce but there is still a statistical effect. So given the world is changeing, regardless of wether or not humans are responcilbe, are we not possible shooting ourselves in the foot as a species, by makeing our life spans to long. I mean look how successful bacteria is as an organism. Most of that success can probably be directly attributed to the breif life span of a single cell, generations are frequent so adaptation/evolution is fast. We can observe the changes in hours.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
give the mice PCP
that'll make them fearless and they'll think they're immortal reaaaal quicklike. Then they will die but they'll go out in a blaze of furry glory
Immoral, fearless and don't forget:
_ of_the_x_mice/ [pharyngula.org]
Smart
http://www.mc.vanderbilt.edu/reporter/?ID=1421 [vanderbilt.edu]
And Regenerating
http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/comments/tales
When is someone going to attach laser beams to their heads?
now that you've opened up our young eyes (by cut-and-pasting something, I highly suspect), we'll be able to look forward to the future.
oh, nevermind. we should all commit suicide now, right? that's what you're trying to tell us, isn't it?
ugh, old people. I would so put you in a home.
"So it looks like we might soon have near immortal, fearless mice." And I for one, welcome our new rodent masters... Kent Brockman
that a scientist dedicated to longevity research is named "Dr. Longo."
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
From reading the article it sounds more likely that the research would more likely result in technology to induce a regenerative stasis in a living being rather than making a normal, healthy and active individual live 6 times longer going about their normal routines.
I imagine this could be used in cancer patients by putting them in stasis for a few months while their system cures the cancer. Better yet, it could open up exploration of deep space. In addition to consuming food, water and oxygen at reduced rates the passengers will benefit from the regenerative properties of the technology that will repair damage caused by radiation that makes it through the ship's shielding.
This reminds me of the story of the man who slowly got more tired and eventually spent most of his time propped up in a chair, barely responsive. His family had assumed it was early senility, and/or old age. His doctors never caught on and the diagnosis stuck. Eventually, someone reviewed his case and discovered that he was unusually hypthyroid, and that his metabolism had simply slowed to an incredibly slow pace. He was given synthroid and slowly brought back to a normal metabolism. There was no cognitive impairment, since there was no brain damage. They tried to keep newspapers, TV, etc away from him but he eventually found out. It was all for naught: he had an inoperable tumor. There was some speculation that the tumor had actually begun to grow about the same time as his metabolic decline began. The tumor wasn't operable at the time he woke up either, so the Rip Van Winkle effect didn't buy him anything. Although metabolic suspension is an intriguing and radical idea for someone with an inoperable tumor, I've never heard anybody seriously suggest it as a treatment option for obvious reasons. The man died about 6 weeks after waking up. Sorry, I can't recall where I read this. It was a long time ago.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
"Putting it more complicatedly, the reason you age is generally regarded to be because of damage your body and cells accumulate over a lifetime of living" Am I the only one here who suspects the reason we live to 80-100 years is because that's what we've evolved to do? Isn't it possible that this time constant happens to "work" and that by altering it we just might badly screw something up?? Does a lung cell fret over the lifetime of a skin cell? Why are we so focused on extending our own lifetimes, instead of thinking about how me might better extend the lifetime of the species?
Maybe you'd have spelled it correctly.
Actually, I spoke with someone researching caloric restrictions and she had a great point (example theory) as to why it might not work with people: the rats that they restricted the diets of lived in relatively clean environments where they were not exposed to disease. Seriously reducing calories can have the effect of reducing your ability to fight disease. These rats did not have to deal with as much disease so a weakened immune system would not have hurt them so much and the benefits the low calorie diet had on oxidative stress could take place.
So a "normal" diet may be a trade off between reduced oxidative stress and strong immune response.
Synergies are basically awesome, and they're even better when you leverage them. -PA
CTG|ACT|GCA|TC
:-)
We could be out of synch with the frame...
CT GAC TGC ATC
C TGA CTG CAT C
But I'm noticing a concern with the GC being present there. It would not be this sequence that is all so important... GC has a tendency to have 5-methyl-cytosines which are deaminated to thymidine. There's no way that strand would last through the generations of mutation in offspring.
Maybe that's why the highlanders are dying out...?
We were designed to live for ever, but the Universe decided to try something else ;)
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
What you said was perfectly reasonable, and intuitive, but also wrong. It used to be thought that the mechanism by which caloric restriction extends lifespan in yeast, fruit flies, mice and maybe for humans as well, was by reducing the damage due to oxidative stress.
Cells burn sugar somewhat like a car burns gasoline and so the theory goes if you eat less food you were putting fewer miles on your internal engine.
But now it seems like that isn't true. The rate of death in fruit flies put on a restricted diet slowed down within just a few days no matter how old the flies were. That implies that animals of any age can benefit from a restricted diet. It seems more likely now that what happens is that the body goes into "starvation mode" very quickly when food is scarce and that animals live longer in this regime. This is alluded to in the article.
The Sir2 gene has been known about and studied for quite some time. The mechanism of its action, epigentic silencing, is actually quite fascinating on its own outside of the context of its function. Well ok, maybe not.
So the billion dollar questions are, "Does this work in people?", and "What are the physiological costs associated with this starvation mode?". Finding out the answers to those two questions will take some time and teach us a lot about the aging process in humans along the way.
63.
No wonder the program is going to go bust.
Does that mean my beer will stay cold 6 times longer, too?
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." -Jesus Christ The Lord's Prayer
Actually, I would think fearless mice would be siginificantly more mortal.
Proverbs 21:19
So why the fuck do we buy insurance?
Fearless Immortal Mice.
The answer is! 42.
Got a sister?
The only thing we really need technology wise is the ability to age gracefully as we get older and as cancer free as possible. There is nothing wrong with dying, but it's going to suck to get old. I'd rather look and feel like I do now in my 30s when I get to be 80 (assuming I make it that long). That would be great.
Also, if they truly have the ability to do gene and DNA fixes on living people, then if they make it expensive enough all the rich assholes will go for it. Sorry, but I don't want to live in a world where rich assholes never die.
This is Old News.This would pretty much fall under the calorie restriction means to extend lifespan in higher organisms.It has been known for some time that the SIR/SCH pathways are involved in lifespan extension, as they are involved in the insulin signaling pathway in higher organisms. Pretty cool that they were able to make a knockout of both genes without it being lethal though. Anyone have a link to the actual journal article, im too lazy to look it up on pubmed
You actually want to prevent someone from owning things? You can't do that without destroying freedom. Go read Hayek and learn a few things.
The problem isn't that people end up having tremendous wealth, it's that the nation works tremendously hard and the profits end up concentrated at the very top. Do you think a pyramid-shaped social structure, with a few elites at the top serviced by hordes of serfs, is ideal? Recall some of the great political engineering feats of the last century, such as the G.I. Bill, which lifted an entire generation of Americans into the middle class--without "destroying freedom", as you say.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
If we're all energy at the most basic level, and the energy has a specific flow throughout our bodies, let alone the rest of our perceived world, why would not physicists be the best doctors we can get? After all, energy studies is one of their specific professions, why not have them fix the unstable energy flows (virii, bacteria, etc.,) in our bodies? I mean, if science is true and we're just a tangible form of energy, why not fix our bodies by altering energy, like magnets and electro-therapy have proven so far by making our broken bones heal faster? Wouldn't it make sense to use energy to fix a problem with energy, since that's the most basic level we know of? Why bother fixing things on a cellular level when we can just manipulate the energy?
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
To put it simply, you can 'burn the midnight oil' and live a short life, or eat less and do less and live longer.
Do enough shrooms and you'll arrive at the conclusion that time really is a construct of man, that people aren't so autonomous but merely a blob of information passed from one generation to the next, that reality is our own creation and so on.
I smoke, drink, work my ass off, and have generally done more in 26 years that anyone I know. I'm richer than an astronaut, have laid more snapper than you can shake a stick at, travelled to over a dozen countries, driven every make of exotic car, etc. I frankly wouldn't be surprised or disappointed in the least if I dropped dead tomorrow. In fact, I'd do so with a deep satisfaction at having played the game mostly by my own absurd rules.
I haven't the least desire to stretch my mortal coil beyond it's prescribed 50-100 yr span. I'd rather make an impression and leave it for the next generation to use as they see fit.
Of course, degeneration is programmed into our DNA: Nature seems to want us to reproduce and then fall by the wayside. But your generation wants to hang onto its youth into its 90s, on the theory that if you stay around long enough maybe you can get your life together.
--Mr.Blue
The study was about a genetic breakthrough, not a change of lifestyle. And it's a 600% increase in lifespan, not 50%. So starvation might add a few years to your life, but modifying a few genes and multiplying your lifespan by six is a different story.
Asimov wrote some really interesting science fiction along these lines, tied in with his various robot sagas. My memory's not too great, so someone might correct me if I'm too far off.
One of the underlying themes was the conflict between Spacers and Settlers, where the Spacers were those who'd taken off early with the technology (especially robots to look after them in every conceivable way), colonised a handful of worlds, but then become relatively stagnant. Longer lifespans and insulated lifestyles caused them to put a high value on life such that they simply failed to progress. It also meant that views and stereotypes in the Spacer society lingered for hundreds of years, because the people who held them didn't die off, and their reproduction rate fell through the floor.
The Settlers, meanwhile, who'd rejected certain technology (especially robotic) earlier on, never ended up being protected or insulated in the same way. They had shorter lifespans, particularly due to things like more average hygiene and disease, but as a civilisation they were much more progressive, to the point where they were overtaking the Spacers within a few hundred years.
"No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always bitchy. No Fun -- for anybody. 67. You are getting Greedy. Act your old age. Relax -- This won't hurt." What kind of life do we got after 50 even if we can walk and swim?
I, for one, welcome our new fearless, immortal, mice overloards.
the mice ARE in control!
I've heard this argument also, but it is surprisingly easily rebutted, especially if you are to look into the history of arts for example, where historically people have done their "best" work in their middle age (Beethoven,etc)
Sit in a room of 20-year-olds. Some will be surprisingly open-minded and mentally flexible, some won't. Guess what, these people when they are 70 will probably have similar personalities. My late music teacher was taking courses and schooling into her 80's.
Being stagnant, resistant to change is a matter of mind and personality, not age.
The "Public" was not responsible for the change of heart in Gay rights, but in the Media, in Universities, etc. The push has been there for decades and decades. Guess what, plenty of those people are in their middle age. Guess what, gay people can be over age 60 also.
Your grandma can't use a cell phone, well guess what, mine can use the internet, program their vcr to record tv shows, and numerous other things. And they are in their 70's and 80's.
Its a matter of attitude, choosing to keep yourself open to new ideas. Age is not an excuse.
Because the proper fundamental value of any living thing is its own life. Because someone whose primary dedication is to bettering others is known as a "sucker" and will attract parasites.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
There is probably more to it than this. Mice and bats have similar metabolic rates (very high), but mice live about 3 years while bats live 30 years. (BTW, I came across this fact in a great article on aging in a recent issue of Harvard Magazine, for those interested)
"dedication is to bettering others" Hmmm. I guess I wasn't very clear. The idea that the human species is seen as an "other" just amazes me, but I'll admit we are a crazy race! Why do you see youself as being separate from the species? To me, this is like a skin cell thinking it is somehow not a part of the body.
Ah, Slashdot... first post and already a blatant spelling mistake.
It's bad enough the Scots had to endure Christopher Lambert pretending to be one of them, but we could at least try to spell the word "Highlander" with all the letters it's supposed to have.
I guess one could look at overall lifetime of the test subjects, to see how long it would take to test these. After all, if you test on something that lives a few weeks and make it live a few months, that's good and you've only used a few months work. Now move to something with a few months lifetime, and give it a year... good, and we've only used an extra year. Now to something that lives 2-3+ years (say, a mouse) and extend it to 9+ years... suddenly you're a decade down just in proven research.
Human research wouldn't necessarily be proven applicable until you have a human live up to several centuries... without adverse reactions to the process.
I've read that book, except it's called The Long Habit of Living.