Scientists Discover Possible Anti-Aging Gene 323
werelnon writes "The BBC is running an article about researchers who seem to have discovered a gene which controls aging. By stimulating this gene, which when malfunctioning causes premature aging, scientists have managed to prolong the average life span of lab mice from 2 to 3 years. Because a very similar gene is present in humans it is quite possible it will do the same thing for people." From the article: "But there may be downsides with Klotho. The long-lived mice in the new experiments tend to be less fertile. And the gene may also predispose people to diabetes. The trick for researchers will be to find ways of getting the life-enhancing results of Klotho while avoiding the drawbacks."
Geriatrics (Score:5, Interesting)
Could the issues that these mice are having be similar to what we as humans are experiencing by exceeding the lifetimes that generations previous had?
Re:Geriatrics (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Geriatrics (Score:3, Informative)
As the name implies people are eating themselves into it.
A large number of fertility issues have also been linked to pollutants in our environment.
life expectancy really isn't increasing... (Score:2)
And our lifestyle choice isn't helping much. The only reason we're not reducing life expectancy is because we have technology to "save" people who
Re:life expectancy really isn't increasing... (Score:4, Informative)
Our health is massively improved due largely to hygiene and nutrition because despite the damage that diet can do, the benefits of the improved nutrition of the last 50 - 100 years has lead to larger fitter bodies with almost no incidences of malnutrition in the developed world. The proof is in the life expectancy of the under developed world where both these factors do not exist.
I cannot get the stats to hand but if you take out mortality in the first five years (which would eliminate the skew you mention from neo/post natal care) then the expected age of a developed world human is vastly greater than it was.
Further evidence of this is the graph of resting pulse rate vs life expectancy of mammals. It is a remarkable fact that "apart from humans" all mammals exhibit a direct correlation between heart rate and life expetancy to the extent that mammals all seem to have the same number of heartbeats in their life (statistically speaking) apart from humans who are way off the graph with many many more heart beats than normal mammals. Such a contrary position is hard to explain from simple physiological differences.
Maybe (Score:4, Interesting)
Diabetes is common now, so is heart disease and cancer. The reason these diseases are so common is because many of the food companies and industries deliberately create products which in tests on mice are known to cause diabetes, cancer, and heart disease. If mice die from high fructose corn syrup, why are humans being given high fructose corn syrup in every product?
Food companies like to blame the problem instead of the cause. They will blame obesity for poor health instead of the quality of their products. If we want better health we need a more advanced food industry which actually designs foods to be as health as possible instead of food that is plain addictive. Otherwise our healthcare costs will continue to rise forever while food companies continue to put junk in foods to give us new diseases of the future.
Grow your own food, or buy organic. Buy supplements. Look out for your own health, be your own doctor, and help fund research for new supplements, help fund organic farmers and shop at the stores which sell quality.
Long sick lives are not as good as long health lives.
Re:Maybe (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Maybe (Score:3, Insightful)
The fast food joints actually tried to offer a bunch of healthy (well, healthier) selections a few years ago; the only problem was people really do like burgers and fries better than salads. They're giving u
Re:Geriatrics (Score:2)
Re:Quality of life is decreasing (Score:4, Insightful)
I also do not see how natural organic sugar is going to affect us in any way. Sugar is sugar, our bodies process the sugar from apples the same as the sugar from coke and pepsi, however apples contain many benneficial antioxidants and far less sugar than soda pop. It's just like natural sea salt, it's still just salt.
What we really need is to eat less fast food, and to get off our asses. There are plenty of other things that we can do to help us be more healthy, but until we can start doing those two simple things we're hopeless.
Re:Quality of life is decreasing (Score:5, Informative)
I also do not see how natural organic sugar is going to affect us in any way. Sugar is sugar, our bodies process the sugar from apples the same as the sugar from coke and pepsi, however apples contain many benneficial antioxidants and far less sugar than soda pop. It's just like natural sea salt, it's still just salt.
I have a degree in nutrition, and from what you are saying you seem to know know anything at all about how the human body works. High fructose corn syrup is not digested in the same way as cane sugar. The glycemic index is different, the body simply was never designed for liquid sugar. If you create liquid salt, the body is not designed for liquid salt. The body is designed to slowly digest sugars in the form of packaged foods like fruit, veggies, and from natural sources. High fructose cornsyrup was made in a lab somewhere.
Eating less fast food is healthy, but its not that simple. Not all fast food is unhealthy, and not all slowly cooked food is healthy. Most products you have in your house have high fructose cornsyrup and cancer causing agents inside them, and depending on how you cook the food decides your cancer risk.
What people need to do is just go back to the cave man diet, if its packaged don't eat it. If you can see what it is and you know what each ingredient on the back of the package is, then go ahead and eat it. Never eat processed foods and you wont have to worry so much about diabetes or heart disease. The problem is its almost impossible to find foods which arent processed in a normal supermarket.
I suggest you take a class on nutrition, and learn more about high fructose corn syrup and the dangers of certain kinds of salts, mercury, and other chemicals which are neurotoxic. Everything you eat influences your body in some way. Your health is based on what you eat, not how much, not where, not how long it takes to cook. Excercise won't cure diabetes or heart disease, it will delay it. Bill Clinton has heart disease, he jogged every day.
Eat processed food and live longer (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, great, that's a perfect plan if you intend to life the 20~25 years lifespan of a cave man. But what people who lament the wide availability of processed food forget is that the use of packaged food is closely correlated with increased life span.
No, I'm not saying that processed food prolongs life, not at all. A correlation does not imply in cause and effect, there could be a common cause for both phenomena. For instance, the problems of cancer, diabetes, and heart disease that you mention could have an alternative explanation: old age. Even if we assume that processed food brings some health problems, those are certainly offset by other advantages in using processed food, because people who live in industrial countries and eat processed food live much longer than people who live in poor countries and eat food directly from nature.
Remember, the industrial system that gives us processed food is the same system that gives us sanitation and advanced health treatment. It's no use eating vegetables fresh from the garden if you don't have treated water to wash them before eating. Even the most "natural" fruit and vegetables are unable to protect us from typhus and cholera.
Perhaps one could eat natural food in an industrial society and get the best of both worlds, maybe that's what you are trying to say. But the system isn't prepared to supply organically grown food for all the 6+ billion people living on Earth today. If it weren't for the hundreds of millions of tons of grain grown with pesticides and fertilizers and now also with genetically modified plants, people would starve.
All in all, the combination of processed food + advanced health treatment has almost doubled the expected lifespan of people living in the industrial countries, compared to a hundred years ago. Given the choice, most people prefer to face the possible risks of diabetes and heart disease in old age rather than dying from other causes before those diseases appear.
Re:Eat processed food and live longer (Score:2)
People often seem to misunderstand the meaning of average lifespan. Back then, you didn't see healthy 25 year olds dropping dead. People were capable of living long back then just like they live long now. The difference is that many babies died at birth, and many died as little kids. So you have to average out the 60 year old cavemen with the ones that died at birth.
Re:Eat processed food and live longer (Score:2)
Re:Eat processed food and live longer (Score:3, Interesting)
This works just fine for extracting oil (not always but that's a different environmental discussion), or making little toys or automobiles, but if it's discovered that stabilizing oil for use in margarine merely req
Re:Eat processed food and live longer (Score:4, Insightful)
Washing your fruit off with clean tap water does not make them
"processed". We're talking about foods made from lots of artificial ingredients, stuck in plastic packaging, and placed in long store shelves. They're convenient, and they taste good cause they're full of lots of concentrated sugars. But they aren't natural, they're chemically way different than anything nature would provide, and so our bodies have not evolved to process them in healthy ways. Fertilized crops aren't the problem, it's the fact that so much of our food cannot be efficiently dealt with by our bodies. And so we become fatasses and get diabetes and stuff.
The solution, the easy one, is to stop eating those manufactured foods. We don't need to go back to everyone growing their own vegetables in their own gardens, but we need to be more intelligent about how the food that is grown ends up in front of the average person. The earth can grow plenty of food. Go talk to some farmers, especially in countries where they aren't subsidized. They're having a rough time because prices are so low. The world is growing more food than it needs. People are only starving for political and economical reasons, not because all the farmland is already being used to capacity.
Re:Eat processed food and live longer (Score:4, Insightful)
Processed food is the problem. If I process organic food (chop it up, press it, fry it, add salt and sugar, etc...) it will now be unhealthy food.
If you want to eat healthy buy and eat FRESH fruit and vegatables. Buy fresh meat, poultry, and fish. Eat most fruit and vegatables raw. Steam your other vegatbles instead of boiling them. Do NOT deep fry anything. Keep sugary and fatty treats to a minimum. Cut back on the amount of meat you eat (unless you are training vigorously every day you most likely eat more meat than you need). Never drink more than a single glass of pop (soda to the Americans) per day. EXERCISE every day for at least 20 minutes.
Pop/soda is liquid sugar. All deep fried foods have too much fat. Virtually all processed foods have too much sugar, salt, and fat. Processing often reduces the vitamins, fibre, and other good parts of food. Cooking your own food is fun and healthy.
Re:Quality of life is decreasing (Score:3, Funny)
What people need to do is just go back to the cave man diet
You explain that to my next-door neighbor who won't stop bitching at me about killing and eating her cat.
Re:Quality of life is decreasing (Score:2)
This is dead wrong. Sugar is not just sugar. The body definitely does not process the sugar from apples the same as the sugar from coke or pepsi.
There are different kinds of sugars, which are chemically different. You have glucose, sucrose, dextrose, etc. They're not the same, and the body handles them differently. The glycemic index is different.
Sugar is *not* just sugar (Score:2)
There are different types of sugars in different proportions, depending on where it comes from. They are metabolised differently and have different effects on your body. Go ask someone who is fructose intolerant.
The sugars in coke and pepsi are typically invert sugars hydrolyzed from sucrose and cellulose, mostly glucose and fructose. Both hit your bloodstream very very quickly indeed.
Re:Sugar is *not* just sugar (Score:3, Interesting)
Heroin and all the other opiates get handled the same way in the brain as the natural endorphins. At some point in their breakdown process, they have a methyl group or other such feature sticking out that's different, the body slows down in handling it, or doesn't naturally produce nearly enough of some enzyme, and all sorts of
klotho? (Score:2)
Re:klotho? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:klotho? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:klotho? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:klotho? (Score:3, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moirae [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clotho [wikipedia.org]
the key... (Score:4, Insightful)
Isn't that always the goal of a research scientist? To find the benefits, while mitigating or eliminating the drawbacks?
In reality: (Score:2, Redundant)
Yes, but there's a more fundamental one. To write the grant proposal so it gets funding and you keep getting paid.
Re:the key... (Score:2)
Side effects? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Side effects? (Score:2)
If you're increasing life expectancy 50%, it seems like decreased fertility would be a benefit, not a drawback. You don't want to cause a population boom.
And you also don't want to see 70 year olds becoming pregant or getting people pregnant.
You'd also expect it. (Score:5, Interesting)
It would be logical, then, if evolution had produced a direct link between aging and fertility. This does not mean it has, only that such a link would be entirely reasonable. We also know, from other work in genetics, that direct links exist in countless places between all sorts of characteristics - even ones you wouldn't necessarily expect.
Sexual reproduction evolved quite late on and different species have very different numbers of X and Y chromosomes. The Duck-Billed Platypus [nih.gov] has 5 X chromosomes, 5 Y chromosomes and a determination system that simply isn't understood at all. It would seem likely, then, that this is a product or extension of aging. Again, this would make a lot of sense, as there is really nothing else that would make sense.
I would imagine there to be multiple links, too. Genetic material is damaged over time, so a later adaptation would presumably have been to put the energy and effort into a timeframe where damage is within acceptable limits. It is also possible that, in species with simple-enough genetic material, this might even be leveraged - a small amount of damage would maximize diversity through subtle mis-copies of the genetic code. The genes would need to be fantastically fault-tolerent for this to work, but it is certainly within the realms of the imaginable.
The upshot of all this is simple enough - tweak one parameter and it WILL impact people in other ways. Rather than regarding this as a problem, it may prove very helpful, as not all parameters are going to be directly or easily controllable. There may be other ways to tweak them, if you exploit these kinds of side-effects.
Of course, they still have to find a way to alter genetic material safely. Existing mechanisms use modified retroviruses that embed desired sequences into the infected person. This method has a moderate-to-high risk of a rare form of leukemia. It is also unclear what impact (if any) the old code remaining present will have.
The problems are not well-understood and the complexity of human genetic code is still too great to be subject to detailed analysis. However, the fact that results are being obtained at all shows that these are very bright people with a good understanding of their subject. It'll be interesting to see how far this goes, over time.
One final note - this might be a way to help revive long-lived species on the edge of extinction. If increasing longevity decreases fertility for the reasons I've suggested, then decreasing longevity should increase fertility. It may be possible to use this (in conjunction with other fertility treatments, if any are usable) to help rebuild populations where the genetics would normally work against them.
Re:Side effects? (Score:2)
Moving with the Tithe... (Score:2)
This might depend on who "you" is. I thought the traditional Catholic position against birth control was because people were supposed to be fruitful and multiply. I wonder if the Catholic church will then take a position against this because it inhibits such multiplication...
Population Boom?!? (Score:2)
Man it's too late, exponential growth. Can't keep going forever though - naturally there will be a calamity, wars or combination of like circumstances (greenhouse gases,
Re:Side effects? (Score:3, Insightful)
Good thing too... (Score:3, Interesting)
Good thing, or we'd be overrun by mice! If you live longer, you better breed slower. Imagine if elephants bred as often as rabbits?
buttttt...... (Score:2, Funny)
Fortunately the Lead Scientist isn't a Cat person.
Attempt was made to contact PETA, but they apparently were in to much shock to respond, but we expect them to be happy with the idea.
Quote from research team... (Score:3, Funny)
enhancing? (Score:2)
I would not call "less fertile" and "predispose people to diabetes" life-enhancing. Life-extending may be, but enhancing?
Re:enhancing? (Score:5, Funny)
As well diabetes can generally be controlled, aging, however is a much more problematic disorder.
And how do you distribute this miracle? (Score:3, Insightful)
And doesn't that open an interesting can of worms? If, for example, it turns out that some people with decently well-off and very foresightful parents can live 50% longer than the rest of us? If you think we have nasty debates now about, say, equal opportunity in college education, just wait a few decades, when it's a question of equal opportunity for that extra 30 years of life...
Re:And how do you distribute this miracle? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:And how do you distribute this miracle? (Score:2)
Feed the Rich ? (Score:2)
If, for example, it turns out that some people with decently well-off and very foresightful parents can live 50% longer than the rest of us?
Well, then at least someone will be able to live longer in contrast to nobody at all.And didn't it strike you as odd that the Queen of Britain died exactly around a round date? Who knows, maybe she is still around?
Re:And how do you distribute this miracle? (Score:2)
Like all technologies, medicine goes where the money is. After the billionaires are "immortalized", new efficiencies and economies-of-scale will rapidly reach out for the multi-millionaires, and then, eventually, even for thee and me...
Related subjects (Score:5, Informative)
The Hayflick Barrier [bioinfo.org.cn], that suggests cells will replicate only a certain number of times.
Hela cells [wikipedia.org] having to do with cancerous "immortal cells" and the length of telomeres [wikipedia.org] and aging.
lysosomes [wikipedia.org] which as the "recycling bins" of cells may overtime become "clogged" with material the cells are unable to recycle and cause cell death.
No matter that there may be a genetic tweak for aging there are other things at play that may impact on the genetic tweak.
Age Limits (Score:5, Informative)
There are a few limitations to our lifespan. The Hayflick limit [senescence.info] may be a driving factor. Body cells, with very few exceptions, have a limit on the number of divisions they can make. This may be related to the way that every time a cell divides, one of the daughter cells has a slightly shorter copy. The ends of the chromosome are telomeres, the aglets [senescence.info] on our gene shoelaces.
Of course, many of our tissues divide more than others, and we're vulnerable to a weak point of failure, whether it be skin tissue (definitely a point of infection), blood supply, blood vessels or what have you.
There have been two major schools of thought about aging, and many points in-between. On one side, some think that aging is caused by an incredible number of small failures from separate causes, and to try to beat aging is doomed to fail on this alone. On the other side of the issue, there are those who believe one or perhaps two major items are at fault for aging, and that we can close to an Elixir of Youth. The truth probably lies somewhere in between.
I still highly recommend Michael D. West's book The Immortal Cell [amazon.com] for an inside account of one search for a cure for aging. (He's also one of the co-authors of the hefty tome Principles of Cloning [amazon.com]). Fascinating stuff, and definitely not the stuff of 'fringe' science.
Re:Age Limits (Score:2)
But there is no inherent reason that cells cannot be designed so that they replicate more accurately (they probably do in elephants and whales which have many more cells than we do). Any programmer knows that you
Re:Age Limits (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Age Limits (Score:2)
Sorry, I've already patented that one. Method of increasing available energy to the body by inserting substances into one or more orifices. You will be hearing from my lawyers shortly.
Re:Age Limits (Score:2, Funny)
The older we get the worse shape we are... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The older we get the worse shape we are... (Score:2)
Re:The older we get the worse shape we are... (Score:3, Insightful)
For all 15 years of this degenerative process, up until the last two
Re:The older we get the worse shape we are... (Score:3, Insightful)
from the article:
I have to agree I wouldn't want to live in a decrepit state, but staying young for longer has a definite appeal.
Re:The older we get the worse shape we are... (Score:2)
Any "anti-aging" gene would be unable to prevent you from dying unless it reduces your chance of dying of at least some of the main causes of death in old people
In other news... (Score:3, Funny)
Klotho vs. Indy longevity genes (Score:2, Interesting)
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2000/12/0012
Running a quick and dirty comparison analysis using Genebank BLAST shows no obvious similarities.
Another Attack on the Dragon-Tyrant? (Score:2)
Stem Cells= Anti Aging (Score:2, Interesting)
Seems like antiaging to me without messing with genes .
Dying early can be a drawback. (Score:2)
Well let's see. You get diabetes, you are less fertile or you have 35 years less life? Well according to the FDA getting diabetes or becoming infertile makes the benefit of the drug, living 35 years longer, totally unacceptable. I think if people were allowed to make this choice themselves instead of the government they could live with the side effects.
Re:Dying early can be a drawback. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Diabetes is already becoming popular (Score:3, Insightful)
You can live longer, but will you feel/look young? (Score:3, Interesting)
whiners (Score:2, Insightful)
and besides, as asimov said, our relatively short life-spans are a cause for collaboration, and you can't say that's not a good thing. a big part of human nature is the concept of legacy, evolving ourselves and passing down to the next generation. if we increase our life-spans, we just slow down the process.
not to mention overpopu
Re:whiners (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:whiners (Score:2)
You know, I think nature would disagree with you there, and she's got far more experience with the subject than you.
Re:whiners (Score:2)
Re:Behold! (Score:2, Insightful)
How about comparisons of this gene (Score:5, Interesting)
Even in very poor parts of Asia, such as Pakistan, centarians(sp?) are not nearly as rare as they are in the US and Europe. Is this due to the same gene? Is it due to diet/exercise? Or is it a combination of factors?
Re:How about comparisons of this gene (Score:2)
Diet & Lifestyle (Score:3, Insightful)
Rural people and particulary the rural poor tend to lead more active lives and eat food that is fresher, home made and healthier than the moderatly wealthy to obsenely rich.
Kind regards
Re:How about comparisons of this gene (Score:2)
When she passed away, the oldest living person in the world was a Canadian woman called Marie-Louise Meilleur.
Should we deduce that French-speaking people "tend to age much less" than others ?
Thomas-
Gene Therapy Right Here Please (Score:2)
You know, I don't see being less fertile as a drawback. If people want to get pregnant these days, they will. Another poster already mentioned a possible population boom.
Don't even think along those lines. What you're saying is "this gene can make you live lon
Ho ho (Score:2)
(Sorry, I don't normally contribute to the perpetuation of Slashdot cliches, but nobody had posted this one. With good reason, I might add.)
The trick (Score:3, Insightful)
No, the trick will be finding whether what they did with the mice applied to humans. Suppressing the side effects they found in mice is nothing by comparison.
While mice are similar in some ways to people, they are also rather different. What extends the life of lab mice might, in humans: a) have no effect, b) cause humans to sprout extra limbs, c) live longe and prosper, or d) none of the above.
And it's going to take a long time before they can try these experiments on humans.
--Pat
so are we going to be younger or older longer? (Score:2)
i would rather prefer it extended our youth or extended our life equally at different parts. meaning i can technically feel like 50 at the age of 75 (50% increase again).
would i really want to extend my life being old?
Re:so are we going to be younger or older longer? (Score:2)
There are plenty of things you can do to improve the quality of your life and to remain healthy as you age. I assume you do all of those things already?
Could there be any other answer other than the process of aging being slowed down?
Re:so are we going to be younger or older longer? (Score:2)
i dunno. they were able to administer a drug called CX717 and restore someone who hasn't slept for 30-36 hours back up to 84% performace [slashdot.org].
how they are doing that? i have no idea. does the drug make your body believe it's already gotten the rest? or does it actually have the results of resting?
i mean what i'm trying to say is they could either be slowing down the aging process, or they can be extending the aging process, which i
Re:so are we going to be younger or older longer? (Score:2)
From 2 to 3? (Score:2)
Re:From 2 to 3? (Score:2)
Will it be possible (Score:2)
The war mongers ain't gonna like this..... (Score:2)
those contributing to such are of course war mongers, as the machinery of war is itself anti-life in its inherent nature. Of course we have other anti-life machinery as well, such as many religions which promote disconnection with this world, and other excuses to say lies, deception and such are ok so long as you ask for forgiveness.
The human mind is a rather powerful device, as what you think and believe has alot to do with how you interact with hard rea
What I really want to know (Score:2)
I've had all the kids that I am going to have, and I already have diabetes. Just tell me how to stimulate the damned gene already!
Eerily familiar (Score:2, Funny)
I bet these "scientists" are really those aliens.
Better get my tinfoil hat.
How to Extend Your Life 50% (No Joke) (Score:4, Insightful)
Diseases of heart - Heart Attack
Malignant neoplasms - Cancer
Cerebrovascular diseases - Stroke
Chronic lower respiratory diseases - Lung Disease
Diabetes mellitus - Diabetes
Now, heart attacks are caused almost exclusively bad poor diet (too much fat) and not enough exercise. Cancer has strong links with diet (too much fat) and exposure to chemicals. Strokes are "heart attacks of the brain" in that diet and exercise are major contributing factors here too. A good portion, but not all, cases of lung disease are induced or exacerbated by smoking. And (adult onset) diabetes has been linked to diets high in fats and sugars.
So considering that 66% of male deaths and 63% of female deaths were caused by the above diseases, if you can eliminate the causes of those diseases, you're obviously going to increase your chances for a long and healthy life.
I don't see how loss of fertility is a drawback (Score:2)
No thanks... (Score:2)
130 year old porn... no thanks!
boosterspice (Score:2)
Re:Cheating death (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Cheating death (Score:2)
Re:Cheating death (Score:2)
Re:Suuuure, you can live to 160 by taking Vitamins (Score:2)
Sorry if my slashdotML is sloppy. Anyhow, I'm thinking you're wrong on this one.
Re:diabetes and infertility? (Score:2)
Re:On a related idea... (Score:2)
Several neurological and nerve diseases are associated with high IQ. I don't think I would be down with one of those, although some are milder than others.
dupe??? (Score:2)
Re:Average lifespan used to be 912 years! (Score:2)
Genesis 6:3 "And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years."
Really after this we can see lifespans falling (it doesn't immediately fall to 120 or so).
Quite a prediction from a book written thousands of years ago, huh? The oldest of people have lived quite exactly 120 years, which also happens to be considered a nice limit by lots of secular scientists thriving for prolonged life. And now, a 50% in
Re:Average lifespan used to be 912 years! (Score:2)