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Molecule Kills Elderly Cells, Reduces Signs of Aging In Mice (sciencemag.org)
An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from a Science Magazine report: Even if you aren't elderly, your body is home to agents of senility -- frail and damaged cells that age us and promote disease. Now, researchers have developed a molecule that selectively destroys these so-called senescent cells. The compound makes old mice act and appear more youthful, providing hope that it may do the same for us. As we get older, senescent cells build up in our tissues, where researchers think they contribute to illnesses such as heart disease, arthritis, and diabetes. In the past, scientists have genetically modified mice to dispatch their senescent cells, allowing the rodents to live longer and reducing plaque buildup in their arteries. Such genetic alterations aren't practical for people, but researchers have reported at least seven compounds, known as senolytics, that kill senescent cells. A clinical trial is testing two of the drugs in patients with kidney disease, and other trials are in the works. However, current senolytic compounds, many of which are cancer drugs, come with downsides. They can kill healthy cells or trigger side effects such as a drop in the number of platelets, the cellular chunks that help our blood clot. Cell biologist Peter de Keizer of Erasmus University Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and colleagues were investigating how senescent cells stay alive when they uncovered a different strategy for attacking them. Senescent cells carry the type of DNA damage that should spur a protective protein, called p53, to put them down. Instead, the researchers found that a different protein, FOXO4, latches onto p53 and prevents it from doing its duty. To counteract this effect, De Keizer and colleagues designed a molecule, known as a peptide, that carries a shortened version of the segment of FOXO4 that attaches to p53. In a petri dish, this peptide prevented FOXO4 and p53 from hooking up, prompting senescent cells to commit suicide. But it spared healthy cells. The researchers then injected the molecule into mutant mice that age rapidly. These rodents live about half as long as normal mice, and when they are only a few months old, their fur starts to fall out, their kidneys begin to falter, and they become sluggish. However, the peptide boosted the density of their fur, reversed the kidney damage, and increased the amount of time they could scurry in a running wheel, the scientists report online today in Cell. When the researchers tested the molecule in normal, elderly mice, they saw a similar picture: In addition to helping their kidneys and fur, the molecule also increased their willingness to explore their surroundings.
If we would live longer we would stay productive much longer in life, so it could possibly be a benefit too. Just because someone lives longer may not cause the population to grow since it may cause people to wait longer before having children..
Imagine what could happen if researchers had 20-30 years extra, instead of 40 years in total, of productive lives and allowing them to continue using their experience and push their research even further. Just look at the guy that invented the current lithium-ion batteries managed to do at the age of 94..
Anything to combat aging.. just look at the amount of resources we use to take care of the sick and elderly.. And as a big bonus everyone would have much better life-quality with less sickness etc.
Correlation or causation?
After all, education and prosperity are in that mix too.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
If this allows you to live a health life until 100 they will put retirement age up to 90.
Resource problems are a myth, in a sense. Population always expands until scarcity: at a point, you can't scale production of some products without investing more labor, which means the basic cost of those products increases, the economization of means decreases, the poor get poorer, and more people become poor. At that point, population expansion slows until technical progress raises the scarcity cap.
Take food. Without GMO, fertilizers, pesticides, irrigation, tractors, and other modern intensive techniques, you need more land to grow the same food. That doesn't just mean more labor per yield of food; it also means you run out of good-climate, good-soil, accessible-irrigation land with a lower total food-per-year yield. Bump that and you can have more population.
The resource scarcity issue is constant, and has always been constant. When we find more, we expand.
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Kill off all my elderly brain cells:
a) Pretty much nothing left in my head.
b) Nobody will notice any change.
Don't step on the baby.