In the Media
Want to Live 400 Years? These Simple Nematode Worms Might Show Humans How
In a new study published in the online journal Cell Reports, a team of international researchers has discovered methods to increase the lifespan of the lowly C. elegans worm by five times, long after its normal three or four week lifecycle.
However, in what came as an obvious surprise to the team, when both C. elegans pathways were altered, this boosted their lifespans up to a whopping 500 percent instead of 130 percent.
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“The synergistic extension is really wild,” MDI Biological Laboratory’s lead study author Jarod Rollins said in a press release. “The effect isn’t one plus one equals two, it’s one plus one equals five. Our findings demonstrate that nothing in nature exists in a vacuum; in order to develop the most effective anti-aging treatments we have to look at longevity networks rather than individual pathways.”
Due to the number of shared genes and cellular pathways, C. elegans are perfect for carrying out advanced research on human aging and cutting-edge experiments in life extension. And because of their brief lifespans, immediate changes in their aging can be observed more readily. The logical progression of this newfound information would be to apply the resulting knowledge to Mankind in order to greater understand our own mortality and its eventual limitations.
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“Despite the discovery in C. elegans of cellular pathways that govern aging, it hasn’t been clear how these pathways interact,” MDI Biological Laboratory President Hermann Haller added. “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.”
Are you prepared to live nearly half a millennium, or satisfied with a solid 80 years or so on our spinning Big Blue Marble?
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