Pages

Jan 4, 2011

Mighty Mouse Has One Less Gene, Lives 20% Longer

Sorry, Apple. Researchers have already created a mightier mouse: By deleting a single gene from a mouse's genetic makeup, they've enabled it to suffer fewer age related ailments and live 20% longer. On humans, that'd be about 16 bonus years.

So what exactly did those crazy scientists do? They bred mice with the "gene that produces the protein S6 kinase 1 (S6K1)" disabled. The effects of this are a bit extreme:

The change mimicked the effect of keeping the mice on a calorie-restricted diet. Severely restricting the diets of yeast, bacteria, mice and primates have granted these animals unnaturally long lives. For humans, however, maintaining a diet of near starvation would be difficult at best

That last part's the bad news so far, but researchers are conducting further studies particularly targeting the S6K1 protein as it seems to have a direct link to longevity in mice. There are hopes that the benefits will one day be reproduced with drugs so that we don't have to starve ourselves for longer lives and prettier looks.
 
 

9 comments:

SuciƓ Sanchez said...

But can it tweet?

Unknown said...

Thats intense stuff... damn.

World of Zero said...

What the hell? Who thinks of this stuff?

Teutorix said...

I like where this is going!

Henri said...

Wow, that is amazing.

MRanthrope said...

16 Years extended life? That means they'll probably want to raise the retirement age to 80 to try and compensate.... bastards.

MArk said...

but which type of years does it add, 16 more years of alzheimers and nobody cares, but 16 more years of my 20's count me in

Wesh said...

wow, bet till we're old they can make us live forever :D

following

Les said...

Wow, that's a considerable increase. Maximum age is one of the few things that hasn't really changed about people through evolution. (older people don't breed, no matter what the internet tells you). The only way we'll increase our max age is through genetic tampering, and I'm all for it.