UCLA Biologists Delay the Aging Process In Fruit Flies
An anonymous reader writes:Life scientists at UCLA have located a gene in fruit flies which, when intentionally activated, increases lifespan by about 30%. The gene (called AMPK) is normal important as an energy sensor, usually triggered by cells with low energy levels. By triggering it at other times, the researchers slowed the fruit flies' aging process (PDF), even beyond the organ system in which the triggering occurred. "Walker said that the findings are important because extending the healthy life of humans would presumably require protecting many of the body's organ systems from the ravages of aging — but delivering anti-aging treatments to the brain or other key organs could prove technically difficult. The study suggests that activating AMPK in a more accessible organ such as the intestine, for example, could ultimately slow the aging process throughout the entire body, including the brain."
And if they make them cold-blooded and move like snails, then I am sure fruit flies will live a hundred years (from our perspective, that is).
Posting to slashdot does not qualify as a proof, unfortunately.
You should have posted elsewhere, e.g., here: http://ip.com/
(just found this website by googling)
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
Seriously. In Australia we're now being made to work until 70 before we can draw a pension. I don't want a career that spans an extra 2 or 3 decades. Especially in IT. I'm tired.
Doctor to patient: You can take this and shove it up your ass. You'll live longer.
Just what we need - fruit flies that live even longer...
Fitness community has been all over this for years http://suppversity.blogspot.co...
I can't get rid of those beasts and they try to make them live longer?
With nobeta=1, it still took me four attempts to get from the front page to these comments without being redirected to the beta version. I came here to read comments, not look at pretty pictures.
Does anyone know how long this âtestâ(TM) will last?
I really doubt that simply having an abstract idea for a feature on some abstract device is sufficient to obtain IP protection.
Otherwise, I now have a patent for antigravity boots. The boots would nullify gravity beneath the user's feet. No stealing my idea, now! Even though I have no idea how this could be accomplished, anyone who actually invents working a/g boots before my patent expires will owe me eleventy billion dollars. If they invent the boots after the patent (and my submarines!) expire, then they get no protection for their invention because it's now public domain!
The sciences and useful arts have been advanced, suckas! Pay the fuck up!
to be the first to welcome our immortal fruit-flying overlords :D
If you want to impress me how about shortening the life of fruit flies? 30% is a good start...
Political correctness is really just herd psychology pushed by insecure people who desperately seek social conformity.
The gene (called AMPK) is normal important as an energy sensor, usually triggered by cells with low energy levels.
As opposed to really important?
It doesn't vibrate. It taps you on the wrist.
I really doubt that simply having an abstract idea for a feature on some abstract device is sufficient to obtain IP protection.
No, but it clearly means that the feature itself isn't innovative, at most the implementation is. As such you can't go after anyone who makes a competing implementation unless it is a copy of your own. (But even then you have to argue that the solution isn't obvious.)
Won't work. You'll just have a girl who ages normally but then be stuck with an old BITCH WHO WON'T DIE at the end of your life.
Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana.
Let's assume for a moment this is scalable to humans and passes the requisite clinical trials. We'll treat this as a given in a Euclidian proof.
Premise 1: Humans will live longer, but this treatment will be expensive
Premise 2: In the absence of substantive reform that mitigates cost to the patient, regardless of socio-economic status, this will stratify the have and hane-nots further.
Premise 3: We already have a culture of the "disposable employee" in many markets, especially in retail, food-service, housekeeping and hospitality
Premise 4: Humans, being self-aware, fear death
Premise 5: If unchecked, stagnant wages relative to inflation are going to exacerbate the current US status-quo in terms of younger working adults competing with Boomers who refuse to retire and becoming lower-wage workers who become "disposable labor."
Conclusion: The extended lifespans are going to require some serious economic, legislative and even societal shifts to accomodate. We may very well have to adjust the age of adulthood, our expectations of what one does in the traditional "early adluthood" and we will have to once again consider retirement is either a feint, or address the issues surrounding labor, the shortage of jobs realtive to workers and living wages, else we will see longer lifespans in the absence of these changes creating serious economic reprecussions. It's great this technology exists, however, we have to consider policy implications in addition to the scientific advancement. I do realize that the model is a fruitfly, and is a long way from mammal models and even further away from human clinical trials, but with the state of the Western economies as they all seem to be (according to the media nayway), then we really need to stop and consider the rammifications of a 30% increase in human lifespans.
The Bible tells us that: Adam lived 930 years. (Genesis 5:5) ...
Seth lived 912 years.(Genesis 5:8) ...
Methuselah lived 969 years.(Genesis 5:27) ...
And Noah lived 950 years. (Genesis 9:29) ...
And that Fruit Flies lived 120 days (Lost Scroll) ...
Gently reply
Let's say this leads to human trials and proof - who gets it? What's the impact on population?
"life extension"....heh....look at what these people do now with their lives....and they want to extend that....
Thank you Dave Raggett
One thing we don't need is longer living fruit flies. What are they going to eat in the winter
"Males of this genus are known to have the longest sperm cells of any studied organism on Earth"
Fruit Fly Sperm
Political correctness is really just herd psychology pushed by insecure people who desperately seek social conformity.
"If love to have a 16 year old girlfriend that doesn't get any older."
Be sure to stay in Nevada though.
So why don't you submit that URL to the USPTO as prior art? Complaining here isn't going to help prevent it from being approved.
Or any sane country with a sane age of consent. Seriously, anything over 16 is absolutely ridiculous for this day and time.
Exactly what California needs
I assume you have never had a 16yo girlfriend. Seriously, they are Very Bad News (tm). Even if you are 16. Probably even more so!
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
It's the sound of the fruit flies that reside in my kitchen cheering like mad, they apparently read Slashdot too.
They're getting intelligent too, the other day - one of them discovered that beer/vinegar + dish-washing liquid is dangerous, so only ONE of the little buggers died - the rest steer towards my beer bottles the SECOND I open it, I swear to you - these bastards have developed some sort of high end technology for seeking my beer, chocolate or any fruit I have laying around. Their targeting systems should be adopted by the military, they're more goal oriented than a group of old people at the mall fighting over the last piece of meat.
I'm going down to the kitchen right now to whack a few of the fat bastards.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
More old geezers like me hanging on for another 20 years, waiting to die, who can't pee, filling up the pockets of corporations that own nursing homes, as I endure a miserable existence, forgetting who I am and why I'm wandering around in my pajamas with no money.
I bet there is some trade-off in organ or body ability. I doubt there is a "free lunch".
In most organisms there is an inherent trade-off among efficiency, metabolism, and entropy.
Table-ized A.I.
Is this in addition to the 40% increase a friend of mine found (serendipitously) 15 years ago?
http://www.neurobiologyofaging.org/article/S0197-4580%2899%2900086-X/abstract
Please refer to old people as Q tips
The drawback is that it keeps the body and the brain both from aging. Not sure if I want my 16 yo girlfriend to well, you know, like, keep the same mental maturity, or something like that, you know? Like, OMG, for real. LOL. BFN.
.. our long-lifespan fruit fly overlords...
This is great. Now all I have to do is figure out how to turn myself into a fruitfly.
...The Attack of the Killer Fruit Flies! would be showing drive-ins.
I miss those days.
Do you want bar flies? Because that’s how you get bar flies. Cougars too.
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.