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posted by janrinok on Saturday January 11 2020, @09:25AM   Printer-friendly
from the "who-wants-to-live-forever?" dept.

Biologists identify pathways that extend lifespan by 500%:

Scientists at the MDI Biological Laboratory, in collaboration with scientists from the Buck Institute for Research on Aging in Novato, Calif., and Nanjing University in China, have identified synergistic cellular pathways for longevity that amplify lifespan fivefold in C. elegans, a nematode worm used as a model in aging research.

The increase in lifespan would be the equivalent of a human living for 400 or 500 years, according to one of the scientists.

The research draws on the discovery of two major pathways governing aging in C. elegans, which is a popular model in aging research because it shares many of its genes with humans and because its short lifespan of only three to four weeks allows scientists to quickly assess the effects of genetic and environmental interventions to extend healthy lifespan. Because these pathways are "conserved," meaning that they have been passed down to humans through evolution, they have been the subject of intensive research. A number of drugs that extend healthy lifespan by altering these pathways are now under development. The discovery of the synergistic effect opens the door to even more effective anti-aging therapies.

The new research uses a double mutant in which the insulin signaling (IIS) and TOR pathways have been genetically altered. Because alteration of the IIS pathways yields a 100 percent increase in lifespan and alteration of the TOR pathway yields a 30 percent increase, the double mutant would be expected to live 130 percent longer. But instead, its lifespan was amplified by 500 percent.

"Despite the discovery in C. elegans of cellular pathways that govern aging, it hasn't been clear how these pathways interact," said Hermann Haller, M.D., president of the MDI Biological Laboratory. "By helping to characterize these interactions, our scientists are paving the way for much-needed therapies to increase healthy lifespan for a rapidly aging population."

The elucidation of the cellular mechanisms controlling the synergistic response is the subject of a recent paper in the online journal Cell Reports entitled "Translational Regulation of Non-autonomous Mitochondrial Stress Response Promotes Longevity." The authors include Jarod A. Rollins, Ph.D., and Aric N. Rogers, Ph.D., of the MDI Biological Laboratory.

[...] The paper focuses on how longevity is regulated in the mitochondria, which are the organelles in the cell responsible for energy homeostasis. Over the last decade, accumulating evidence has suggested a causative link between mitochondrial dysregulation and aging. Rollins' future research will focus on the further elucidation of the role of mitochondria in aging, he said.

More information:

Jianfeng Lan et al. Translational Regulation of Non-autonomous Mitochondrial Stress Response Promotes Longevity, Cell Reports (2019). DOI: 10.1016/j.celrep.2019.06.078

Journal information: Cell Reports


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 11 2020, @05:18PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 11 2020, @05:18PM (#942262)

    That article you cite is bunk, Completely ignoring global warming and not a word towards the 6th mass extinction.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Saturday January 11 2020, @05:58PM (2 children)

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Saturday January 11 2020, @05:58PM (#942267) Journal

    Any void left by the Anthropocene's mass extinctions will be filled by more adaptable life forms. But for those craving a little more biodiversity, DNA collection and de-extinction is on the table. Whole genome sequencing is becoming cheaper than ever.

    If you want massively reduced emissions in the near term, than we need something like fusion power sooner than the ITER plan, and cheaper electric vehicles with better battery technology.

    There is a possibility of reversing warming using stratospheric aerosol injection.

    The world has only agreed to cut emissions to a certain extent [prospect.org]. Standard of living trumps the possibility of future harm. Luckily, it looks like aerosol injection will cost relatively little compared to the scale of the world economy. So the problem can actually be ignored until it needs to be fixed. And if that doesn't work, then maybe the Malthusians around here will get what they wanted.

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    • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Saturday January 11 2020, @09:55PM (1 child)

      by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Saturday January 11 2020, @09:55PM (#942315) Journal

      I haven't heard of any proposal for geoengineering that didn't have the possibility of making things *much* worse, and the nations haven't been adhering to the (insufficient) reductions that they have already agreed to. Some have, but I'd need to look closely before I'd be certain that they weren't just exporting their pollution.

      Also resource consumption is, in and of itself, not sustainable. And it hasn't been declining much, it's just been shifting around as costs have changed.

      Also, I don't think you have a good grasp of the evolutionary time scale. Yes, species will, eventually, be replaced by something else. In a few million years. The replacement will be developed in parallel, so it's not "a few million years/species", but it's still longer than humanity has thus far existed. And don't expect the new forms to be "more adaptable", merely adapted to different conditions.

      For the short term fusion power is an infeasible solution. Perhaps if we'd gotten it working a decade ago. At the moment we've got to depend on a mix of small fission reactors, solar, wind, and specialized for local conditions. And the "small fission reactors" haven't yet been proven...though some are in advanced design approval state.

      Aerosol injection into the stratosphere is a really bad idea whose saving grace is that you need to keep doing it, or it will go away. It cools the equator and temperate areas more than the poles, and thus weakens the jet stream even more (and it's already been weakened by polar warming). Actually, the best geoengineering idea I've encountered derived from a failed attempt at wave-power: Basically it was you take a very long pipe, and pump water in at the bottom, carrying with it a bit of bottom mud to bring to the top and spread it about as fertilizer. This *might* work, and there aren't any obvious (to me) problems with it. It could result in lots of plankton growth at the surface, some of which would sink to the bottom as it died, taking carbon with it, and some of which would be food for fish and whales. It would be a bit expensive, but it wouldn't take much power, so it could be solar powered, it wouldn't matter if it occasionally stopped flowing, etc. Actually it might even generate a bit of power if you hooked it to a generator, but not enough to pay for maintenance, and the generator would add to the maintenance, and for this purpose you want to maximize flow for input effort. (Note that you'd need lots of these, and they'd be most effective in "ocean deserts" which can be recognized because the water is blue.)

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      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday January 12 2020, @07:10AM

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday January 12 2020, @07:10AM (#942456) Journal

        I haven't heard of any proposal for geoengineering that didn't have the possibility of making things *much* worse, and the nations haven't been adhering to the (insufficient) reductions that they have already agreed to. Some have, but I'd need to look closely before I'd be certain that they weren't just exporting their pollution.

        That's true of any action, including doing nothing or going the currently approved mitigation pathway. It all has the possibility of making things *much* worse. Would be nice to get some evidence with that conjecture so we could start to make some educated decisions.