Longevity Gene Found 358
quixote9 writes "Calorie restriction while maintaining nutrient levels has long been known to dramatically increase life spans. Very different lab animals, from worms to mice, live up to 50% longer (or even more) on the restricted diets. However, so far, nobody has been able to figure out how this works. Scientists at the Salk Institute have found a specific gene in worms (there's a very similar one in people) that is directly involved in the longevity effect. That opens up the interesting possibility that doctors may someday be able to activate that gene directly and we can live long and prosper . . . without giving up chocolate."
People demand it (Score:5, Funny)
Wonderful... (Score:2)
Science really goes at a fast speed nowadays.
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OTOH (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:OTOH (Score:5, Insightful)
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Highlander? (Score:2)
And those immortals will go around chopping each others heads off since "there can be only one".
Re:OTOH (Score:5, Insightful)
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As nice as it would be to leave some sort of a lasting legacy behind, I would greatly prefer to be there myself. Even if Prestige-like technology existed to make an identical clone, memories and all, it would not be enough. Obviously if
Re:OTOH (Score:5, Insightful)
We're maybe as little as a century away from actually seeing the worlds population shrinking unless we start increasing lifespans a lot faster than we have.
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Wow, my first "flamebait" :P Totally undeserved if we judge by the responses I got, which by the way were exactly the kind of discussion I wanted to have. Oh well, enough whining. I know that population rates decline on industrialized countries, but they don't hold the bulk of the population anyway. China alone has over a billion people, yes, but India has another and they have no such policy. And neither do many of the developing countries. So unfortunately it just seems like the weight of the population i
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Re:OTOH (Score:5, Informative)
Maintaining raw population, meaning a growth rate greater than or equal to zero. Many first-world nations (notably, Japan and much of Europe) have more people dying than being born, resulting in negative population growth.
In general, education level and availability of technology correlate negatively with birth rate, and this holds true both between countries and between socio-economic groups within countries.
Re:OTOH (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:OTOH (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, I'm pretty sure that if you could actually have eternal life, you'll get bored of it eventually and will top yourself given that nature's no longer doing the job for you. And I'll bet that would happen before your 200th birthday.
Either that, or after 200 years, they'll have figured out how to not be bored. Frankly, it's not that hard.Re: (Score:2)
Tithonus (Score:3, Interesting)
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Pros:
- Less money spent on education since the productive years of each person would be much longer, just think of what the pay would be for a *nix admin with 120 years of experience that still have 80 years left until retirement
- Less money spent on caring for the elderly, since people would probably choose to end their l
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"Three people that live to 80 are the equivalent to 2 people that live to 120,"
So in theory, if I bump off 20 60-year-olds, I should live past 1,000 ... oh well, that's ONE way to save Social Security, but it sounds like voodoo math to me ...
Population control, NOW! (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not the drugs that are the problem, it's our never-ending population growth! The more land we turn into farmland, the more kids we have, that again will need to turn new land into farmland, or squeeze even more out of what is allready there to stay alive, and have more kids that needs more farmland... and so on, so forth...
Seriously, we know that we will crack the secrets to long life at one point or another. We know that we want to maintain a high standards of living, and achieve self-realiszation. We want there to be wild nature left. We want there to be more species that rats, cockroaches, dogs and cats living alongside us.
It doesn't take a genious to see that a major pieces in the puzzle that is our long-term survival is population control, and we need to enact it now. Global warming is a small piece in comparison.
To those who wish to endulge, I'd stornly reccomend Daniel Quinn's excellend books 'Ishmael [amazon.co.uk]', and 'The Story of B'.
Re:Population control, NOW! (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't take a genious to see that a major pieces in the puzzle that is our long-term survival is population control, and we need to enact it now.
We've been doing it since the dawn of time. It's called war.
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That would explain why the amount of land farmed in North America has been falling for decades, and the population would be stable or shrinking were it not for immigration, yes?
The fact is that by the time I am old the "population crisis" will be under-population,
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competing for food (Score:2)
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Skip the latter thought. That's why there are vampire novels.
Actually, I'm deadly serious. The reason Frankenstein made it into the diversity of the English literature canon is because it mythologized doubt about the rise of science at the end of the 19th century, right? I suggest it is possible the future canon may teach An
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Well, since the study said it's about earthworms, I'll say that I'm of five pairs of hearts about it.
Seriously, though, if the average person loved and extra 35 years, the drain on the world's resources would be HUGE. And economically, we'd all have to work much, much longer in order to support our retirements, and the gap between rich and poor would increase. I'm not sure I'd be enthused with working for 90 years before retirement, and I don't know what widening the income gap
Retirement age.. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Retirement age.. (Score:4, Insightful)
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There's no way society would be able to afford that. If we all lived to 150, you'd see the retirement age raised to 100+.
That said, being retired doesn't mean you do nothing...
Re:Retirement age.. (Score:5, Insightful)
1) able to financially support yourself for the rest of your life without continuing to work, and
2) possibly no longer valuable in the workforce (i.e. too expensive for the quality/quantity of work you can contribute)
Living longer would mean you need more money to support yourself in retirement, or that you need to delay retiring. The second point depends on what health state (and mental state) you're in at an older age.
Personally, I plan to retire as soon as possible - but there's no way I could support myself and wife/etc. for 80+ years on what I've saved to date!
MadCow.
Why would someone want to stop working? (Score:2)
Waiting around to die would suck.
Being able to support yourself in retirement (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm already planning for retirement such that I will be able to live off the interest alone, and in such a way that I won't be living off all the interest (so that the interest will grow with cost-of-living adjustments). That way, it won't matter how long I live past retirement - the longer I live, th
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What makes you think your government would allow you to retire at 70 if you lived to 150?
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Gene sequence in hex is... (Score:5, Funny)
(That is going to hurt my karma but I am still no bored of that joke...)
(OK, maybe a little over it)
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Ponce de León still searching... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Won't somebody please think of the great-grandchildren!?
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Well, the point here is not to prolongue the life for the sake of staying merely alive, i.e. losing your mind and control over body functions, but instead staying *young*. What good is it to become 250 years old, when the last 180 years of that you spend in th
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If people end up living to 200 or 250 (obviously, whilst retaining their faculties) why would they necessarily "work-then-retire"?
Why not work until you have enough put by to have 5/10/15 years doing something you like doing, then work a bit more, then have more time off. This way you wouldn't have to work until you are 100 before you could enjoy yourself! Much better to work until you are, say, 30, then have 5 years off, then w
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Another thing is, that with people living longer (not to mention forever) the monetary system would break as everyone would be able to accumulate wealth and become filthy rich over a long enough period of time. Hence, inflation will have to rise in a similar way -- or we just switch over to a new system where unused, deposited money decays instead of accumulates.
Not to
not only do people live longer on calorie restrict (Score:3, Interesting)
so your calorie restricted 90 year old is like your uncalorie restricted 60 year old
in other words, you don't just extend lifespan, you extend the period of robust physical ability to continue working and earning a living
in a hypothetical society where these longevity genes were activated somehow in a large segment of the population, it wouldn't be crazy to imagine retirement ages of 90 or 100
tinfoil response (Score:5, Funny)
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Old News (Score:2, Informative)
Who Doesn't Wan't More Time? (Score:5, Insightful)
In short, I think living longer would make it a lot easier to live sensibly. As it is, if I have to weight the risks of investing time or taking something I can do now, I end up taking the most courageous and risky courses possible.
I don't think it's a relative thing either. Not in the sense that, regardless of whatever time-span I had, I would always wish, "Wow, if only I had twice as much." In an absolute sense, I just don't think I'll ever have the years to do all the things I want to. It makes it seem really pointless to invest eight years into something (for instance, undergrad + med-school) when it's such a large investment that, by the time I get done, I will have lost many opportunities of youth, but I couldn't put such a thing off because, who wants to invest eight years in something that will only pay off for twenty?
Humanity is robbed. People live crazy lives because we are going to die too soon to live fully, so life is futile. Damn whatever you recognize as the determining factor of our longevity. The light is green to research like this.
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Yes but the piecemeal approach of medicine won't get there fast enough to work for me. The only real possibility I can see is transhumanism.
They all got it wrong (Score:5, Funny)
Ha, ha, but ... (Score:3, Interesting)
You know what? Eating healthy takes a little more effort and attention, but it actually tastes a hell of a lot better.
Just walking into a fast-food place now actually makes me a little nau
Where did the funding come from? (Score:3, Funny)
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Offhand I can't think of an example of Lazarus Long passing on his longetivity trait to his decendents. There were his two clone sisters but both were heavily engineered. So IMHO the foundation failed, because few people directly lived long lives as a result of their efforts.
Note that I am really referring to TEFL, not Methuselas children.
Very old news! (Score:2)
Interesting similarities (Score:5, Informative)
We have a breakfast (Suhur) before dawn and do not eat or drink until sunset. After sunset we have a usual meal (Iftar). The only difference to the diet described in this BBC article is that we do not drink while Mr. Cavanaugh does.
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Most of my colleagues who follow ramadan actually gain weight during it as they eat copiously of high calorie food while the sun is down. A big breakfast to tide you through the day & a big, though late, dinner annihilates any gain you might get by not eating during the day.
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I find it strange (Score:2, Interesting)
IMHO this stems from a belief that zest for life is NOT a biological effect, but rather a result of inexperience.
People grow jaded with age, many even grown comfortable with their own mortality.
I am inclined to believe that the biological decay of our bod
abstract of original article (Score:5, Informative)
It does not mean that FOXA family does not do something for our longer lives, it just mean that article does not prove that via sequence similarity. Since I enjoy "trolling" I would add that (once again) Nature capitalizes on the subject importance and publishes articles with overstretching conclusions.
Live long and prosperous (Score:2, Funny)
Does this gene transforms our ears in pointy ones?
the only way this could be a good thing (Score:2)
Awesome! (Score:3, Funny)
Pha-4 Gene information (Score:2, Informative)
pha-4 Gene Information [wormbase.org]
Even *better* gene found! (Score:2)
<spinal_tap_mode> :^)
Big Deal. You should see what the pha-11 gene can do!
</spinal_tap_mode>
mmmm, chocolate... (Score:2)
Great.... (Score:3, Funny)
What about Achilles' choice ? (Score:2, Insightful)
6.5 Billion people and growing (Score:2)
I'd rather they figure out a way to make the years we have healthier and happier.
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Of course it'll level off after everyone gets the treatment, but the new established 'level' will be higher than it otherwise would be.
I still think the emphasis should be on living better, not living longer. Do we really want the retirement age
worms and caloric restriction: the dauer effect (Score:5, Interesting)
I thought "calorie restriction" study was debunked (Score:4, Interesting)
Thing is, rats that have a normal diet live as long as rats that have calorie restricted diet.
Or, that's how I understand it.
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Re:Earlier death (Score:5, Insightful)
"You can have my extended life gene when you pry it from my cold dead hands."
Seriously, if you want to extend life, ban fructose as a sweetener. Unlike regular sugar, fructose blocks the hormones that make you "feel full" so you continue eating and drinking (esp. soda pop). 2/3 of the population is overweight, and a LOT of those are obese. Of course, a fructose ban would result in lower sales of all junk foods (because you'll "feel full" sooner), so expect it to be fought by the manufacturers, who're just fattening you up fo the slaughter.
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The life expectancy these days is longer than it has ever been, so how about spending that time doing something other than wondering how you're going to die?
Surgeon General says "y'all too fat, lardbutts"! (Score:3, Informative)
"The life expectancy these days is longer than it has ever been,"
Wanna bet? Nothing has changed in the 3 years since this, except that people have continued to get fatter ...
http://www.surgeongeneral.gov/news/testimony/chil d obesity03022004.htm [surgeongeneral.gov]
Re:Earlier death (Score:5, Informative)
So people still fall for this one, eh?
Newsflash - Plain ol' table sugar (aka "sucrose") contains nearly the same amount of fructose as that big-bad-boogeyman, High Fructose Corn syrup!
Sucrose has a 50/50 mix of fructose and dextrose, while HFC contains from 43 to 55% fructose.
But by all means, keep blaming American's fat asses on HFC rather than admitting that we simply eat way too much and exercise way too little...
Re:Earlier death (Score:5, Informative)
HFCS in foods is largely 90/10. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_fructose_corn_s
Only in sports drinks is the glucose content of HFCS higher than that of in sucrose.
The wikipedia article also mentions that the most common sweetener for processed foods and soft drinks is HFCS 55 (55/45), which isn't much greater in fructose content than the 50/50 of sucrose. However, they don't mention whether HFCS 90 or HFCS 55 is cheaper to process, which would make that the more prevalent variety. Regardless, it's safe to assume that HFCS foods have more fructose than if they were to have used sugar instead.
I'm not disagreeing that obesity is a result of eating too much and exercising too little. But what we eat also contributes to our health. And consuming large amounts of HFCS through processed foods doesn't help.
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They're maximizing their profits - a dollar in hand today is worth more than a prospective dollar a year down the road, plus, over your (now shorter due to obesity) life-span, you'll end up spending several times more on pop and junk food because the fructose turns off the production of the "I'm not hungry any more" hormones.
A government-mandated switch from fructose back to ordinary sugar would cost them more than half their sales, but it would save tens of billions in health-care costs every year ...
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Read this. [tcsdaily.com]
Re:Earlier death (Score:5, Informative)
All sugars promote tooth decay.
Also http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?ne wsid=65470 [medicalnewstoday.com], http://jcem.endojournals.org/cgi/content/full/89/6 /2963 [endojournals.org], http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/05/05050 3152956.htm [sciencedaily.com]
Fructose depresses leptin and insulin levels. Leptin is normally produced when you eat, and this triggers the "ok, I'm no longer hungry" signal in your brain so you stop eating. Lowering the leptin level causes you to still feel hungry, even after you've eaten. Switching from fructose to sucrose will allow your body to regulate itself better.
Its probably going to take some major lawsuits (and bankruptcies) to fix this problem ...
High fructose corn syrup (Score:2)
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The commonly accepted path to immortality is to get rid of all the things that kill you, one at a time. This is just another step.
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Only until Americans realize getting rid of things that kill you also means getting rid of guns, then they'll go all Second Amendment on you.
Re:Earlier death (Score:4, Insightful)
If two sane people had had guns at VT or Kileen, Tx Luby's, a lot less people would have died.
However, the average citizen tends to get angry, or has a clever child that gets a hold of the gun, or is just joking around, etc. etc. and so we get more total deaths from having a lot of guns out there.
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All that being said. The reason for the second amendment is to protect us from the government when it *inevitably* goes evil on us. They always do. They always will. When they do- hundreds of thousands or evil millions of people die really fast.
So it is just a question of how long before you need guns to protect yourself.
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On other hand- if you have a gun, you can probably get a machine gun. And indirect attacks so successful in Iraq would be equally effec
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"Time is a predator. Oh, you can delay it with medicines and doctors, but in the end it pounces and makes the kill...."
From memory, from ST: Generations MMP, Malcom McDowell.
Oxygen consumption total =same over lifespan (Score:2)
Remember, oxygen is a fairly corrosive molecule, and is not necessarily good for you.
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Re:Who would want to live forever? (Score:5, Funny)
3 men in an old-age home were comparing notes.
The 70-year-old said that he needs to go to the toilet first thing in the morning, and it takes him 10 minutes just to get out of bed, and another half-hour in the can, so he has to get up at 6:30 if he's going to make it for breakfast at 7:00
The 80-year-old said "You think that's bad? It takes me half an hour to get out of bed, and an HOUR in the toilet, so I have to get up at 5:30 in the morning if I'm going to eat breakfast at 7:00. Heck, I have to take half a viagra so I don't end up pissing on my slippers!
The 90-year-old says "You young'uns ... I wake up at 6:55, have a piss, take a shit, and I'm all done by 7:00 ... then I have breakfast, while they change my sheets."