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Science

Scientists Reverse Aging In Human Cell Lines 140

Eloking writes: Professor Jun-Ichi Hayashi from the University of Tsukuba in Japan has discovered the regulation of two genes involved with the production of glycine are partly responsible for some of the characteristics of aging. With this finding he has been able to "flip the switches on a few genes back to their youthful position, effectively reversing the aging process." The Professor's findings cast doubt on the mitochondrial theory of aging, which proposes that the accumulation of mutations in the mitochondrial DNA are responsible for aging.
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Scientists Reverse Aging In Human Cell Lines

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    • by penguinoid ( 724646 ) on Thursday May 28, 2015 @02:14AM (#49788789) Homepage Journal

      Time

      No, irreparable damage. Note that what is irreparable depends on level of technology.

      Examples of potentially irreparable damage: DNA damage, oxidative damage, toxin accumulation, damage to extracellular matrix, scarring, changes in gene activity, and more.

      Note: Your cell line has lived for about 3,600,000,000 years. The trick to living 3,600,000,000 years is to repair damage faster than it occurs, for example by reproducing cells at sufficient rate that new undamaged material is created faster than damage accumulates.

      • by Anonymous Coward

        The trick to living 3,600,000,000 years is to repair damage faster than it occurs, for example by reproducing cells at sufficient rate that new undamaged material is created faster than damage accumulates.

        One might argue that the advent of politicians proves that this strategy is not working optimally.

        • by Skapare ( 16644 )
          that is only a recent element of damage ... it will be corrected by replacement. now my biggest worry is Facebook.
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Still don't forget most cell lines factually don't last that long, the successful ones made it at the cost of overwhelming numbers not making it. So for example when a batch of cells go bad (say cancer), it helps to have a whole other batch of cells, say in another person, to fall back on. This is great research none the less.
      • My teeth are fine now but after 100 years... I would hate to have to wear dentures for eternity.
  • I used to work there (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Applehu Akbar ( 2968043 ) on Wednesday May 27, 2015 @11:35PM (#49788359)

    I wrote a PL/I compiler for Tsukuba's IT department. Yes, that was a long time ago. The university stood alone among rice fields at the time; now it's the centerpiece of Tsukuba Science City, which researches a little of everything.

  • Oh man (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I guess that means the current pricks running things will run things forever...yay

    • by epyT-R ( 613989 )

      Yup, and they'll deny it treatment to the general public..

  • epigenetics (Score:5, Interesting)

    by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Wednesday May 27, 2015 @11:38PM (#49788365) Journal
    The scientists compared cells from 80-97 year olds, and kids under age 12. From the article:

    As expected, the older cells had reduced cellular respiration, but the older cells did not show more DNA damage than those from children. This discovery led the team to propose that the reduced cellular function is tied to epigenetic regulation,

    So it seems like the aging process of reduced cellular respiration comes from gene expression, that is, which genes are active, rather than their inability to perform.

    • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27, 2015 @11:44PM (#49788387)

      Can you break this down for me sesame street style? 31 year old alcoholic idiot here...

      • Re:epigenetics (Score:5, Informative)

        by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Wednesday May 27, 2015 @11:54PM (#49788423) Journal

        Can you break this down for me sesame street style? 31 year old alcoholic idiot here...

        1) Don't drink so much.
        2) Not all of our genes are active. For example, if you exercise then certain genes activate (presumably ones that say 'big muscles?').
        3) When we get old, our 'aging' genes activate.
        4) These scientists found a way to 'deactivate' the aging genes.

        I have no idea if that made more sense. I don't think this is the only problem with aging, though; here is a list of known problems [wikipedia.org].

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward

          ok, so imagine a library with books on all kinds of subjects. You're only interested in say, space rockets. So, you're only reading those books and the rest just sit on the shelf. Now, every cell with a nucleus (red blood cells excluded among others) has the full DNA library. DNA is like the library in that it is a string of genes which are like the books in a library. Think of genes like recipes or instructions- they code for specific proteins. These proteins make things happen in your body. The liv

        • by Anonymous Coward

          Pretty much this, really.

          It just goes to show that evolution tended towards a nice niche between longevity to breed and bring up offspring before setting in ageing.
          Stable growth.
          But evolution can't see the future, y'know, since it is a concept. So it had no idea about the ramifications of our industrialized society.
          What I wonder is how our genetics is going to react to our growing numbers, ample food supply, eventual drop in supply due to growing numbers, rising temperatures and more chaotic weather, over

        • Yay! LIke! This is just what science reporting ought to be like. This won't get people thinking that 80-year old Japanese people are turning into 12-year-olds like the original article might. Here's my 2p's worth...

          4) These scientists found a way to 'deactivate' the aging genes.

          This is not necessarily a good thing to do. My mum (which is currently 95) has blood cancer. She disliked chemotherapy, and would have refused a second round if it. However, the aging process also slowed her cancer development t

      • by TechyImmigrant ( 175943 ) on Thursday May 28, 2015 @12:03AM (#49788453) Homepage Journal

        Can you break this down for me sesame street style? 31 year old alcoholic idiot here...

        If we lived too long, evolution to adapt to the changing environment would be impacted.
        We evolved mechanisms to kill us off in a timely manner so we don't compete with our better adapted children too much.

        The processes of evolution aren't for your benefit. They're just things that get selected for for maximum propagation. This is bad. If we find the mechanism and can stop it, there will be some really old farts about, arguing about how their Cherry M keyboards are superior to the direct brain interface.

        • Re:epigenetics (Score:5, Insightful)

          by delt0r ( 999393 ) on Thursday May 28, 2015 @04:36AM (#49789173)
          We are already post evolution. Now we are getting up to re engineering! And before you start of with the "billions of years of evolution optimal mother nature" crap. Life is clearly *not* designed and could do with a bit of a intelligent designer if you ask me. there is always a better way, and just trying random things is not the best way to find it.
        • If we lived too long, evolution to adapt to the changing environment would be impacted.

          Too late! In a couple hundred years, we went from walking around and working the fields all day, to idling in cars and elevators and sitting in a chair all day and with access to more food than we could possibly eat, including artificial food. And in a few more years we'll take that mammalian internal development thing, and probably the much older sperm racing thing, and replace them with selected genes developed in an artificial womb. (Which will also mean no more "must fit through mom's pee hole" limits o

        • But we have already nullified environmental adaptation with clothing, housing, and agriculture. The future of human evolution is going to be based on intelligence and social adaptation.

          • But we have already nullified environmental adaptation with clothing, housing, and agriculture.

            Correct. For the past ~2000 years, rise of trade, urban culture and sophisticated economies meant smart people tended to become more successful (wealthy) and breed more children. For example in the Far East nations, surest way for an ordinary person to raise your social status and income was to be really smart and score high on the social service exam which would lead to a government bureaucrat position. With the newfound wealth you could afford to not only start a family, but also a second family. Having s

        • Nietchze hated the theory of evolution as much as he did because he feared it promoted a herd ideal.

          Looking to evolution to inform etiquette and behavior sounds like some parlor game where people are blowing smoke in each others faces.

          Other than embracing mediocrity per se, killing people for being old is, well, too awful to be worth my time considering.

          On the other hand I'll be there's an ivy league university out there that would like to extend a chair to you.
  • I'm going to associate it with that cool food art. My life has now improved significantly!
    Thank you University of Tsukuba!

  • Google wants to patent everything, including the means to reverse aging. Don't be evil Google!
  • by Anonymous Coward

    Reversing it twice is bad!

  • If this works, the monied and in-power will make this as illegal as LSD and heroin.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I'd certainly hope so. You know how easy it is to score LSD and heroin.

    • If this works, the monied and in-power will make this as illegal as LSD and heroin.

      Not necessarily.

      If the anti-aging drug(s) make people healthier, reducing the drain on the government pensions and enabling the government to push the retirement age out over the horizon, so the people will be working and taxed, they might prefer to have the drugs put into use.

      Heck, they'd probably add them to the water.

      • This is one of the many reasons SS is a stupid concept. There shouldn't "age of retirement" that's set in stone. If we were a rational society we would have raised the "age of retirement" to 68 in the 1970s and 70 in the 1990s and we would now be talking about when to bring it to 72.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 28, 2015 @12:26AM (#49788515)

    It's certainly possible that, as a person gets older, epigenetic regulation of (nuclear encoded) mitochondrial genes can get messed up in a way that impairs mitochondrial function.

    But lots of things get messed up as a person gets older. Obviously a person accumulates a lot of damage that never gets repaired - e.g. because the repair mechanisms that would be needed don't even exist. But a person's cells are also on this amazing developmental program that takes a person from a single cell to full adult. While much of this program shuts down once a person reaches adulthood, there are almost certainly parts of this developmental pathway that continue to operate at a low level - slowly causing changes that over time increasingly make a person less healthy.

    Bottom line, there ain't no silver bullet on aging. Eventually it will be possible to design a new species that looks and acts human but that has the necessary repair mechanisms and developmental programs to be able to live indefinitely. And humanity may then choose to (voluntarily) go extinct allowing themselves to replaced by this new species. But any such species would be vastly different genetically than modern humans. Living forever is fundamentally and pervasively incompatible with our genetics.

  • Excellent! I want my age 19 wanker back!

  • Immortality would realistically cause the collapse of human civilization. Massive cullings would have to be undertaken. Riots, revolts, revolutions would all ensue. Economies would destabilize as the retirement system would lose all meaning. Jobs would never be vacated.

    Seriously. If there is anything that might have wiped out all other intelligent species in the galaxy, it's the scientific achievement of immortality.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      We have always valued saving people's lives and old people are people too.

      If everyone has at most 1 child, then every generation is half the size so that population would stabilize even if no one ever died. Since people do die of other causes than old age, the average could be perhaps be even slightly higher than 2 and population could still stabilize eventually. Yes, retirement would be different, no, that would in no way destabilize economies - it would be a tremendous economic boon not to have to support

      • by Gordo_1 ( 256312 )

        >If everyone has at most 1 child

        Yes, that would be incredibly easy to enforce.

        • Re:Collapse (Score:4, Interesting)

          by rednip ( 186217 ) on Thursday May 28, 2015 @06:33AM (#49789483) Journal
          Actually, without any 'enforcement' at all, the average woman in the U.S has a fertility rate of 1.6, which is actually less than the replacement rate need for a stable population even if we eliminate old age. If it wasn't for immigration we'd be losing population. Virtually all 'advanced economies' are the same.
      • Yes, retirement would be different,

        You would probably work for a while, retire for a while, work some more, retire some more, try something different, and keep going until you got hit by a car.

    • Re:Collapse (Score:5, Insightful)

      by delt0r ( 999393 ) on Thursday May 28, 2015 @04:43AM (#49789193)
      Why does this shit get spewed forth every fucking time. By that logic we should never treat anyone for anything. After all artificially long life spans are clearly evil and will cause the downfall of all that is good. Just like comics, pron, video game, cell phones, self driving cars, robotics, AI... in fact crawl back the your cave while you still can.
      • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

        by 0123456 ( 636235 )

        Why does this shit get spewed forth every fucking time.

        Because the left hate humans, because most humans won't do what they're told just because the left are convinced they know what's best for them. Also, humans typically move further to the right politically as they grow older, so a population whose average age is measured in centuries won't have much time for SJWs.

        • by Anonymous Coward

          Worse. All the bigoted assholes won't die as quickly so we'll have to deal with their bullshit longer. Why do you think we tend to progress toward less bigotry and oppression as a society? It's because the assholes eventually die and only the most brainwashed bigots continue to carry the torch. Of course the worst of those sometimes realize how shitty they were in their youth and will take it down a notch from being a supreme douchebag to just being a typical douchebag that uses terms like SJW.

      • Cavemen were modern They were fully wireless, and I hear they liked to go clubbing.

      • There's a difference between extending life and living forever.

    • by Eloking ( 877834 )

      Immortality would realistically cause the collapse of human civilization. Massive cullings would have to be undertaken. Riots, revolts, revolutions would all ensue. Economies would destabilize as the retirement system would lose all meaning. Jobs would never be vacated.

      Seriously. If there is anything that might have wiped out all other intelligent species in the galaxy, it's the scientific achievement of immortality.

      Ok I'll take a shot.

      Our civilisation (mostly) depend on economy. And what's the biggest thread of economy in devellopped country right now? Population ageing. We get more and more older, health cost rise and rise and the economy crash deeper and deeper. Get my drift?

      Idealy, economically speaking, people would work, make money and stay healthy until they die. The basis of our retirement system depend of having more income from the young than expence from the old and, currently, we're clearly not heading in t

    • by Nidi62 ( 1525137 )

      Immortality would realistically cause the collapse of human civilization. Massive cullings would have to be undertaken. Riots, revolts, revolutions would all ensue. Economies would destabilize as the retirement system would lose all meaning. Jobs would never be vacated.

      Seriously. If there is anything that might have wiped out all other intelligent species in the galaxy, it's the scientific achievement of immortality.

      Or it will jumpstart human exploration and settlement of the universe. If a person can comfortably and productively live for centuries then it will be much easier for us to send manned missions to the rest of the planets in our solar system as well as enable us to explore outside our solar system. Who needs ftl travel when you can live 500-1000 years?

    • It must be difficult to remain such a shallow individual, only seeing gain from the demise of others.
    • I think this may actually be a boon for the species. Think about it, everyone is granted an immortal lifespan. You still have the same percentage of the population that are little more than -I'm looking for a better phrase than "idiot brutes" but lets go with that. They will have a longer lifespan sure but not by much as lifestyle will become the deciding factor in how long you live. You will have those unfortunate souls continuing to die off at alarming rates and the more mature individuals gaining more
  • Hurry up!!! (Score:5, Funny)

    by linuxguy ( 98493 ) on Thursday May 28, 2015 @01:42AM (#49788689) Homepage

    I am 43 and starting to feel the effects of aging. I need this stuff pronto!

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Hate to tell you this, but if you think it's bad now, wait 20 more years.

    • I got about 10 years on you, imagine how I feel. Well, at least maybe my son will get to benefit from this, he's an early teenager.
  • So what happened to the theory that the shortening of telomeres was responsible for aging?

    • by delt0r ( 999393 )
      Aging is widely accepted to be multifaceted. telomeres, dna damage, epigenetics, build up of plagues and shit. there is considered to be about 7 major things, and its not really considered an exhaustive list.
  • We have seen that with modern medicine we live longer and longer. The body is slowing down in the ageing process but the BRAIN is not. It is not the longevity of life that counts. It is the quality.
  • Oh boy! A chance to work 100 years instead on "only" 70, and watch the Earth drown in human flesh!!! Fuck that shit...
  • by Anonymous Coward

    Instead of permenating existing tissue to reset all the epigenetic switches.. just extract a few cells and throw out the rest.. reset at conception and 'clone' the individual.. differentiate by mixing genes extracted from successful individuals that survived to adulthood. Filter meta-genetic information from one generation to the other through tutalage and temporary 'parenthood'.. throw away the rest.

    How to mess this up? Initiate random epigenetic repairs and partial repairs, reduce atoposis, induce mutagen

  • Gizmag's paper reports the research is about a Glycine regulating gene, then suggest Glycine supplement may sometime thrive as anti-age treatment.

    Is it just me, or did the person that wrote the second part failed to understand what is gene regulation?

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