Reverse aging: Can science turn back the clock?

Reverse aging: Can science turn back the clock?

Sarah Yang-Berkeley on Friday, February 1, 2013 13:47
Source: futurity.org 

UC BERKELEY (US) — Researchers report they’ve made a major advance in understanding the molecular mechanisms behind aging.

"Studies have already shown that even a single gene mutation can lead to lifespan extension," says Danica Chen. "The question is whether we can understand the process well enough so that we can actually develop a molecular fountain of youth. Can we actually reverse aging? This is something we're hoping to understand and accomplish." (Credit: "youth pill" via Shutterstock)

The team was able to turn back the molecular clock by infusing the blood stem cells of old mice with a longevity gene and rejuvenating the aged stem cells’ regenerative potential.

The biologists found that SIRT3, one among a class of proteins known as sirtuins, plays an important role in helping aged blood stem cells cope with stress. When they infused the blood stem cells of old mice with SIRT3, the treatment boosted the formation of new blood cells, evidence of a reversal in the age-related decline in the old stem cells’ function.

“We already know that sirtuins regulate aging, but our study is really the first one demonstrating that sirtuins can reverse aging-associated degeneration, and I think that’s very exciting,” says study principal investigator Danica Chen, an assistant professor of nutritional science and toxicology at the University of California, Berkeley.

“This opens the door to potential treatments for age-related degenerative diseases.”

Chen notes that over the past 10 to 20 years, there have been breakthroughs in scientists’ understanding of aging. Instead of an uncontrolled, random process, aging is now considered highly regulated as development, opening it up to possible manipulation.

‘Molecular fountain of youth’

“Studies have already shown that even a single gene mutation can lead to lifespan extension,” says Chen. “The question is whether we can understand the process well enough so that we can actually develop a molecular fountain of youth. Can we actually reverse aging? This is something we’re hoping to understand and accomplish.”

Sirtuins have taken the spotlight in this quest as the importance of this family of proteins to the aging process becomes increasingly clear.

Notably, SIRT3 is found in a cell’s mitochondria, a cell compartment that helps control growth and death, and previous studies have shown that the SIRT3 gene is activated during calorie restriction, which has been shown to extend lifespan in various species.

To gauge the effects of aging, the researchers studied the function of adult stem cells. The adult stem cells are responsible for maintaining and repairing tissue, a function that breaks down with age.

They focused on hematopoietic, or blood, stem cells because of their ability to completely reconstitute the blood system, the capability that underlies successful bone marrow transplantation.

The researchers first observed the blood system of mice that had the gene for SIRT3 disabled. Surprisingly, among young mice, the absence of SIRT3 made no difference. It was only when time crept up on the mice that things changed.

By the ripe old age of two, the SIRT3-deficient mice had significantly fewer blood stem cells and decreased ability to regenerate new blood cells compared with regular mice of the same age.

What is behind the age gap? It appears that in young cells, the blood stem cells are functioning well and have relatively low levels of oxidative stress, which is the burden on the body that results from the harmful byproducts of metabolism. At this youthful stage, the body’s normal anti-oxidant defenses can easily deal with the low stress levels, so differences in SIRT3 are less important.

“When we get older, our system doesn’t work as well, and we either generate more oxidative stress or we can’t remove it as well, so levels build up,” says Chen. “Under this condition, our normal anti-oxidative system can’t take care of us, so that’s when we need SIRT3 to kick in to boost the anti-oxidant system. However, SIRT3 levels also drop with age, so over time, the system is overwhelmed.”

Old mice, new blood

To see if boosting SIRT3 levels could make a difference, the researchers increased the levels of SIRT3 in the blood stem cells of aged mice. That experiment rejuvenated the aged blood stem cells, leading to improved production of blood cells.

It remains to be seen whether over-expression of SIRT3 can actually prolong life, but Chen pointed out that extending lifespan is not the only goal for this area of research. “A major goal of the aging field is to utilize knowledge of genetic regulation to treat age-related diseases,” she says.

Study co-lead author Katharine Brown, who conducted the research as a student in Chen’s lab, says SIRT3 has some potential in this regard.

“Other researchers have demonstrated that SIRT3 acts as a tumor suppressor,” says Brown. “This is promising because, ideally, one would want a rejuvenative therapy where you could increase a protein’s expression without increasing the risk of diseases like cancer.”

Researchers from the University of Toronto, Massachusetts General Hospital’s Center for Regenerative Medicine, and the Harvard Stem Cell Institute contributed to study, which is published in the journal Cell Reports.

The Searle Scholars Program, the National Institutes of Health, and the Siebel Stem Cell Institute partially funded the study.

Source: University of California, Berkeley

Straight from the Source

Read the original study

DOI: 10.1016/j.celrep.2013.01.005

Scientists find key to immortality for asexual worms

Scientists find key to immortality for asexual worms

By Kate Kelland

LONDON | Mon Feb 27, 2012 3:18pm EST
Source: reuters.com

mdc.helmholtz.de

(Reuters) - Who wants to live forever? Some flatworms do, even if it means no sex.

British scientists have found that a species of flatworm can overcome the process of ageing to become potentially immortal and say their work sheds light on possibilities of alleviating ageing and age-related characteristics in human cells.

In a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal on Monday the researchers found that the flatworms, known as planarian worms, can continuously maintain the length of a crucial part of their DNA, known as telomeres, during regeneration.

"Our data satisfy one of the predictions about what it would take for an animal to be potentially immortal," said Aziz Aboobaker, who led the research at Britain's University of Nottingham. "The next goals for us are to understand the mechanisms in more detail and to understand more about how you evolve an immortal animal."

Planarian worms have long fascinated scientists because they have an extraordinary ability to regenerate. A planarian worm split lengthwise or crosswise will regenerate into two separate living worms.

Aboobaker's team studied two types of planarian - those that reproduce sexually, like humans, and those that reproduce asexually by simply dividing in two.

Both types appear to regenerate indefinitely by growing new muscles, skin, guts and even entire brains again and again, Aboobaker explained in a statement about the work, but the asexual ones also renew their stocks of a key enzyme which may mean they can be immortal.

Scientists know that one of the key factors associated with ageing cells is telomere length. Telomeres are sections of DNA that cap the ends of chromosomes, protecting them from damage and the loss of cell functions linked to ageing. Shorter telomeres are thought to be an indicator of faster ageing.

Previous research -- which won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2009 -- has shown that telomeres can be maintained by the activity of an enzyme called telomerase.

In most sexually reproducing organisms the enzyme is most active during early development, but Aboobaker's team found that in the asexual worms, the planarian version of the enzyme is dramatically increased during regeneration - a factor that allows stem cells to maintain their telomeres as they divide to replace missing tissues.

Douglas Kell, chief executive of the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council which part-funded the study, described the finding as "exciting" and said it "contributes significantly to our fundamental understanding of some of the processes involved in ageing."

The work also "builds strong foundations for improving health and potentially longevity in other organisms, including humans," he said in a statement.

(Editing by Paul Casciato)

Anti-Aging Drug Breakthrough: Can Humans Live to 150?

Anti-Aging Drug Breakthrough: Can Humans Live to 150?

Monday, 11 Mar 2013 04:52 PM

By Nick Tate

Source: newsmaxhealth.com

 

sirtrispharma.com

More than 100 drugs have been found to combat aging by virtually the same biological mechanisms and may be available within five years, according to landmark new research led by a Harvard University researcher.

The work, published in the journal Science, has proven that a single anti-aging enzyme in the body — known scientifically as SIRT1 — can prevent age-related diseases and extend lifespans. The research also shows that SIRT can be switched on by 117 known drugs, as well as low-calorie diets, exercise, and the antioxidant resveratrol, found in red wine.

David Sinclair, a Harvard Medical School professor of genetics, said the discovery means that a whole new class of anti-aging drugs is now viable, which could ultimately prevent cancer, Alzheimer's disease, and type 2 diabetes.

"Ultimately, these drugs would treat one disease, but unlike drugs of today, they would prevent 20 others," said Sinclair. "In effect, they would slow aging."

He added: “We're finding that aging isn't the irreversible affliction that we thought it was. Some of us could live to 150, but we won't get there without more research."

According to the new research, SIRT1 is activated naturally by calorie restriction and exercise, but can also be switched on by resveratrol — found in red wine, grape skins, peanuts, and berries — as well as drugs and supplements.

Although research on resveratrol has been going for a decade, Sinclair’s work is the first to identify the basic science that explains how it confers health benefits. Past studies have suggested it may have promising implications for the treatment of cancer, cardiovascular disease, heart failure, type 2 diabetes, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's disease, fatty liver disease, cataracts, osteoporosis, muscle wasting, sleep disorders, and inflammatory diseases such as psoriasis, arthritis, and colitis.

Sinclair formed a started up company, Sirtris, to develop the anti-aging medical technology. It was subsequently sold to GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). Sinclair is now a scientific advisor to GSK. Several other authors on the paper work for GSK or an affiliated company. Four thousand synthetic activators, which are 100 times as potent as a single glass of red wine, have been developed; the best three are in human trials, Sinclair noted.

"In the history of pharmaceuticals, there has never been a drug that tweaks an enzyme to make it run faster," said Sinclair, who is also a geneticist with the Department of Pharmacology at the University of South Wales, Australia. "Our drugs can mimic the benefits of diet and exercise, but there is no impact on weight."

While any drug would be strictly prescribed for certain conditions, Sinclair said oral medications could be developed soon as an anti-aging preventative, in the same way statin drugs are prescribed to prevent, instead of simply treating, cardiovascular disease.

In new research, led by Sinclair, overweight mice given synthetic resveratrol were able to run twice as far as slim mice and they lived 15 percent longer.

"Now we are looking at whether there are benefits for those who are already healthy," said Sinclair. “Things there are also looking promising.”

The study was funded, in part, by the National Institutes of Health.

Who wants to live forever? Scientist sees aging cured

Who wants to live forever? Scientist sees aging cured

By Health and Science Correspondent Kate Kelland
LONDON | Mon Jul 4, 2011 2:39pm EDT
Source: reuters.com

(Reuters) - If Aubrey de Grey's predictions are right, the first person who will live to see their 150th birthday has already been born. And the first person to live for 1,000 years could be less than 20 years younger.

A biomedical gerontologist and chief scientist of a foundation dedicated to longevity research, de Grey reckons that within his own lifetime doctors could have all the tools they need to "cure" aging -- banishing diseases that come with it and extending life indefinitely.

"I'd say we have a 50/50 chance of bringing aging under what I'd call a decisive level of medical control within the next 25 years or so," de Grey said in an interview before delivering a lecture at Britain's Royal Institution academy of science.

"And what I mean by decisive is the same sort of medical control that we have over most infectious diseases today."

De Grey sees a time when people will go to their doctors for regular "maintenance," which by then will include gene therapies, stem cell therapies, immune stimulation and a range of other advanced medical techniques to keep them in good shape.

De Grey lives near Cambridge University where he won his doctorate in 2000 and is chief scientific officer of the non-profit California-based SENS (Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence) Foundation, which he co-founded in 2009.

He describes aging as the lifelong accumulation of various types of molecular and cellular damage throughout the body.

"The idea is to engage in what you might call preventative geriatrics, where you go in to periodically repair that molecular and cellular damage before it gets to the level of abundance that is pathogenic," he explained.

CHALLENGE

Exactly how far and how fast life expectancy will increase in the future is a subject of some debate, but the trend is clear. An average of three months is being added to life expectancy every year at the moment and experts estimate there could be a million centenarians across the world by 2030.

To date, the world's longest-living person on record lived to 122 and in Japan alone there were more than 44,000 centenarians in 2010.

Some researchers say, however, that the trend toward longer lifespan may falter due to an epidemic of obesity now spilling over from rich nations into the developing world.

De Grey's ideas may seem far-fetched, but $20,000 offered in 2005 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Technology Review journal for any molecular biologist who showed that de Grey's SENS theory was "so wrong that it was unworthy of learned debate" was never won.

The judges on that panel were prompted into action by an angry put-down of de Grey from a group of nine leading scientists who dismissed his work as "pseudo science."

They concluded that this label was not fair, arguing instead that SENS "exists in a middle ground of yet-to-be-tested ideas that some people may find intriguing but which others are free to doubt."

CELL THERAPY

For some, the prospect of living for hundreds of years is not particularly attractive, either, as it conjures up an image of generations of sick, weak old people and societies increasingly less able to cope.

But de Grey says that's not what he's working for. Keeping the killer diseases of old age at bay is the primary focus.

"This is absolutely not a matter of keeping people alive in a bad state of health," he told Reuters. "This is about preventing people from getting sick as a result of old age. The particular therapies that we are working on will only deliver long life as a side effect of delivering better health."

De Grey divides the damage caused by aging into seven main categories for which repair techniques need to be developed if his prediction for continual maintenance is to come true.

He notes that while for some categories, the science is still in its earliest stages, there are others where it's already almost there.

"Stem cell therapy is a big part of this. It's designed to reverse one type of damage, namely the loss of cells when cells die and are not automatically replaced, and it's already in clinical trials (in humans)," he said.

Stem cell therapies are currently being trialed in people with spinal cord injuries, and de Grey and others say they may one day be used to find ways to repair disease-damaged brains and hearts.

NO AGE LIMIT

Cardiovascular diseases are the world's biggest age-related killers and de Grey says there is a long way to go on these though researchers have figured out the path to follow.

Heart diseases that cause heart failure, heart attacks and strokes are brought about by the accumulation of certain types of what de Grey calls "molecular garbage" -- byproducts of the body's metabolic processes -- which our bodies are not able to break down or excrete.

"The garbage accumulates inside the cell, and eventually it gets in the way of the cell's workings," he said.

De Grey is working with colleagues in the United States to identify enzymes in other species that can break down the garbage and clean out the cells -- and the aim then is to devise genetic therapies to give this capability to humans.

"If we could do that in the case of certain modified forms of cholesterol which accumulate in cells of the artery wall, then we simply would not get cardiovascular disease," he said.

De Grey is reluctant to make firm predictions about how long people will be able to live in future, but he does say that with each major advance in longevity, scientists will buy more time to make yet more scientific progress.

In his view, this means that the first person who will live to 1,000 is likely to be born less than 20 years after the first person to reach 150.

"I call it longevity escape velocity -- where we have a sufficiently comprehensive panel of therapies to enable us to push back the ill health of old age faster than time is passing. And that way, we buy ourselves enough time to develop more therapies further as time goes on," he said.

"What we can actually predict in terms of how long people will live is absolutely nothing, because it will be determined by the risk of death from other causes like accidents," he said.

"But there really shouldn't be any limit imposed by how long ago you were born. The whole point of maintenance is that it works indefinitely."

Immortality: The Next Great Investment Boom

Immortality: The Next Great Investment Boom

Eric Markowitz | Inc.com staff

Feb 7, 2012
Source: inc.com/

As baby boomers age, they're looking for ways to turn back the clock. Savvy entrepreneurs, scientists, and venture capitalists are getting in on a burgeoning market that some are calling "the Internet of healthcare."

Paramount/Courtesy Everett Collection - A Curious Case: Can we reverse, or even severely slow, the aging process? A growing cabal of venture capitalists, researchers, and entrepreneurs is working on curing viral disease, various types of cancer, and the most unavoidable ailment—death. 

Courtesy Company - Peter Thiel,
the idiosyncratic Facebook
 investor and PayPal founder. 

There's no denying it: America is getting old. By 2030, the number of Americans older than 65 will have grown by 75 percent to 69 million, and 20 percent of the population will be older than 65—compared with only 13 percent today.

But what if "getting old" wasn't really "getting old?" What if aging—at least the physical deteriorations that accompany it—was something that could be prevented? It's a lofty idea, but it's one that a new breed of biotech start-ups, scientists, and prominent investors are beginning to tackle.

Peter Thiel is one of those investors. Thiel, the idiosyncratic Facebook investor and PayPal founder who recently paid 20 kids to drop out of college and start companies, was the subject of a recent profile in The New Yorker that dissected a number Thiel's quirks, including his ardent libertarianism and his aversion to seatbelts, and, perhaps most outstandingly, his belief that with the right investments, he might just be able to escape death. Back in 2006, Thiel gave Cambridge anti-aging researcher Aubrey de Grey $3.5 million under the auspices of the Methusaleh Foundation, a non-profit headquartered in Springfield, Virgina, that awards scientists who are working on life-extension therapies. "Probably the most extreme form of inequality is between people who are alive and people who are dead," Thiel told The New Yorker.

In 2010, Thiel and his partners at Founders Fund, a Bay Area venture capital firm, invested $500,000 in Halcyon Molecular, a biotech start-up whose 28-year-old founder has a "dream to create a world free from cancer and aging."

To understand the fund's investment, you have to appreciate what Founders Fund is—or, more specifically, what it is not.

Courtesy Founders Fund - Along
 with investing in biotech,
 the Founders Fund also funds
 artificial intelligence, robotics,
 and aerospace research. 

"These are not guys who care about an extra million dollars," says Brian Singerman, a partner at Founders Fund along with Thiel. "These are guys who wanted to do something amazing for the world."

Singerman, an early employee at Google who founded the iGoogle team, came to Founders Fund after having what he describes as an "epic six hour epic dinner with Sean Parker." Parker, an executive general partner in the firm, recruited Singerman shortly after.

Equal parts brilliant and idealistic, Singerman is adamant that aging is a problem that can be solved. The fund's portfolio has invested in about 14 health and biotech companies all interested in solving life's ultimate problem: death.

"We have a company that's charged with curing all viral disease, we have a company that's charged with curing several types of cancer," he says. "These are not things that are incremental approaches. It's all fine and good to have a drug that extends life by a certain amount of months or makes living with a disease easier. That's not what we're looking for. We are not looking for incremental change. We are looking for absolute cures in anything we do."

Singerman, who graduated from Stanford, believes there are two basic elements of curing aging: first, you have to cure the stuff that kills you. The second part, of course, is figuring out the processes by which the body deteriorates. Finding complete, fast, and cheap DNA sequencing methods are a main focus of the fund.

"I'm not going to say we're going to cure aging before next week," he says. "That's just silly. But do I think that within the next 10 years we'll have the cure for several forms of cancer? I absolutely do. Do I think that in the next 10 years all forms of viral disease will be wiped out? Absolutely, we have a shot. Do I think that we're going to stop the aging process within the next 10 years? No, but do I think we'll have a much better understanding of how to get to that point? Absolutely."

Singerman is not alone in his quest for immortality.

Gregory Bonafiglio, the co-founder and managing partner of Proteus Venture Partners, says the baby-boom generation is having a profound impact on the market, especially when it comes to regenerative medicine.

"When you talk about anti-aging, what I hear, and what a lot of people hear, are aesthetic things like wrinkle creams and hair re-growth," Bonafiglio says. "The truth of the matter, though, is that the process of aging is one that involves significant deterioration of all organ systems. Whether it's Parkinson's or Alzheimer's, all of these things are related to the aging process. And as the demographic in the U.S. begins to age, that's a major force that's driving the market for the field."

Proteus, which has partners located in Boston, Cambridge, and Silicon Valley, has gone so far as to call regenerative medicine and anti-aging the "Internet of healthcare," meaning it's poised for some historic investment boom. The firm, which focuses its investments in regenerative medicine, invests solely in start-ups that are working on cell therapy and tissue engineering, targeting conditions such as prostate cancer, cardiovascular disease, bone regrowth, and skin repair.

By its calculations, the current market for regenerative medicine is about $1.6 billion. But by the year 2025, they predict that number may surge to about $20 billion. Likewise, revenue generated from regenerative medicine start-ups generated some $130 million in 2001—by 2010 it has ballooned to more than $1.5 billion in revenue. The company also notes that there are about 400 regenerative products on the market today, and 600 more in development. Bonafigli, who sits on a number of scientific research boards including the International Society for Stem Cell Research and the International Society for Cellular Therapy, says the amount of clinical activity in this field has exploded in the last five years. "The entire field is growing," he says.

Politicians are beginning to see this need, too. In May, H.R. 1862: Regenerative Medicine Promotion Act of 2011 was introduced into Congress, receiving cross-party support. The bill aims to make it easier for both researchers and private biotech companies to raise funding for research. The bill would help companies like Sierra Sciences, a biotechnology company based in Reno, Nevada, where researchers have been working on "shutting off the cellular-aging clock," the telomere. (Their motto is "Cure aging—or die trying.") It would also help academics, who have recorded some astonishing breakthroughs as well, especially in the fields of regenerative medicine. Simon Melov and researchers at the Buck Institute, the first independent biomedical research institute in the United States, extended the life of a worm by 44 percent with a regimen of drugs. Stephen Helfand, now a researcher at Brown University, was able to isolate a gene in a fruit fly, alter it, and breed a line of flies that lived twice as long as the common fruit fly.

David Gobel, who founded the Methusaleh Foundation in 2003, says, he started the foundation to address a basic concern: improving, if not extending, human life. But even just 12 years ago, there was resistance to this idea.

"When we started this effort, the idea of extending the healthy human lifespan, was 'Ponce de Leon' and 'Fountain of Youth,'" he jokes. The biggest problem, he says, was that scientists were hesitant to come out in public to say that something could be done to cure aging. "The moment they said something like that, they'd be labeled as quacks."

But over time—and in part due to progress made by biotech start-ups over the last decade—things have changed. Gobel likes to credit the Methusaleh Prize with encouraging the "serious scientists" to come out of the woodwork and begin work on anti-aging projects. The scientists don't assert that they knew how to fix the problem of aging, Gobel says, but they were emboldened to step up and argue that aging is merely an engineering problem that could potentially be solved.

"Now it's no longer a career-ending conversation; it's now a fundable conversation, especially in the area of regenerative medicine," he says.

David Kekich is the founder and CEO of Maximum Life Foundation, a non-profit that hopes to reverse the human aging process—a la The Curious Case of Benjamin Button—by 2033. Ten years ago, Kekich organized one of the first "anti-aging" conferences, pulling together scientists that are developing technology one day that will not only be able to halt aging, but also to reverse it.

"Will I realize my dreams? I really don't know," Kekich writes on his company's blog. "But I do know incidents like paralysis and suffering and most of the ravages of aging will be things of the past one of these days. And I do believe we have a fighting chance to reap the benefits of those "miracles" in our lifetimes. I also believe the worst thing that will happen from this project is, we'll add some healthy years to our lives and will make small fortunes in the process."

Eric Markowitz reports on start-ups, entrepreneurs, and issues that affect small businesses. Previously, he worked at Vanity Fair. He lives in New York City. @EricMarkowitz

5 Immortal Animals

5 Immortal Animals

Juniper Russo, Yahoo! Contributor Network
Jan 6, 2011

Source: voices.yahoo.com

 

Immortality is an age-old concept. Mythology as old as human history refers to people and animals who never die. But, for the most part, immortality is a fantasy-- right? Well, right. Sort of. Surprisingly, there are some animal species that, for whatever reason, have simply decided that they don't like the idea of death and that they will have no part in it. These animals are functionally immortal. They never age, and-- unless an outside force does them in-- they could theoretically live forever.

The Sea Anemone


library.thinkquest.org

The lowly sea anemone doesn't look like an immortal animal. In fact, it doesn't even look like an animal. In between swaying to the left, swaying to the right, and occasionally swallowing a bit of debris, this brainless polyp is busy defying everything we know about mortality. A sea anemone doesn't age as it gets older; it simply grows bigger. Fortunately for those who find this a little creepy, none of them have lived long enough to develop sentience yet-- they get wiped out at around age 80 by heat, water pollution, infections and greedy collectors.







The Lobster

123rf.com

Like the sea anemone, the lobster is an idiot. It has no brain, and its central nevous system is about as simple as a common household insect. But lobsters have somehow figured out a way to defy aging as we know it. Unlike people, lobsters don't experience any change in metabolism or body-function as they get older. A one-hundred-year-old lobster will even continue eating, moving and making baby-lobsters without any sense of shame. They also keep getting bigger-- meaning that, after a couple-hundred years, they can be the size of a wolf, and capable of scaring the living daylights out of anyone who's read the Dark Tower series. Did-a-chik? (For more about the lobster's functional immortality, click here.)


The Aldabra Giant Tortoise

en.wikipedia.org

Aldabra giant tortoises are exactly what they sound like-- freaking giant. The males can weigh nearly 800 pounds, which would make them the most terrifying animals in the world if they ate meat and moved a little quicker. Fortunately, Aldabra tortoises barely seem to notice humans like us-- they aren't tame; they simply don't care. Because, inside their little reptilian brains, they are laughing at the fact that we get old and die. We aren't sure just how long Aldabra tortoises live, because they have a pesky tendency to live longer than the people watching them. The oldest confirmed age of an Aldabra tortoise was 255 years, but some may have lived to be twice that age.



The Rougheye Rockfish

afsc.noaa.gov

The rougheye rockfish just sounds defiant. In fact, I'd include a few more desciptions-- like riptide, rugged, rumblin', radical and ravin'-- in its name, but that would probably remind you too much of that douchebag surfer-guy who smoked a joint with your sister ten years ago. And, just like that surfer-guy, the rockfish is incredibly ugly but makes up for it by being defiant of everything. Including mortality. A rougheye rockfish, which is a functionally immortal animal, can live to be 200 years old or more, unless some guy with a fishing-pole manages to break it of its persistent addiction to life.


The Immortal Jellyfish


a-z-animals.com

The name says all. When the immortal jellyfish gets tired of being a sexually mature adult, it can decide to be a polyp-- that is, a baby-- again. To do this, the jellyfish (technically a medusa) turns itself inside-out, then re-absorbs its tentacles and other dangly-bits. It then land in its grave (or birth site) somewhere in the sand and becomes a colony of tiny little polyps. It's like your grandpa deciding that he's going to go to bed and turn into a few dozen fetuses-- only the immortal jellyfish doesn't have dementia and actually will follow through on its threat.







The Hydra


uni-kiel.de

The hydra is a nearly microscopic immortal animal, but what it lacks in size it makes up for in stamina. (You probably know at least a handful of men who use the same excuse with with their girlfriends.) Hydras are actually remarkably efficient predators; they release an explosion of neurotoxins into their prey, paralyze it, and then consume the animal whole. Every single cell in the hydra's tiny body is constantly dividing and rejuvenating, so any injured, polluted or defective cells are diluted by the thousands of others. Because they are constantly replenishing their living cells, hydras do not age at all-- ever.







Immortality doesn't truly exist in practice, but, in theory, any of these immortal animals really coulld manage to live forever. Unfortunately for them (and fortunately for us) environmental conditions do eventually destroy every living "immortal" animal.

Published by Juniper Russo

Juniper Russo is a freelance writer living in the Southern US. She writes for several online and print-based publications and passionately advocates an evidence-based approach to holistic health and activism... View profile

Ray Kurzweil on How to Combat Aging

Ray Kurzweil on How to Combat Aging

Ray Kurzweil
July 6, 2009
Source: technologyreview.com
 
The noted futurist says that exponential advances will allow us to intervene in the aging process.

Ray Kurzweil

Submitted in response to Technology Review’s interview with Leonard Hayflick. See “Can Aging Be Solved?”

Entropy is not the most fruitful perspective from which to view aging. There are varying error rates in biological information processes depending on the cell type, and this is part of biology’s paradigm. We have means already of determining error-free DNA sequences even though specific cells will contain DNA errors, and we will be in a position to correct those errors that matter.

The most important perspective in my view is that health, medicine, and biology is now an information technology, whereas it used to be hit or miss. We not only have the (outdated) software that biology runs on (our genome), but we have the means of changing that software (our genes) in a mature individual with such technologies as RNA interference and new forms of gene therapy that do not trigger the immune system. (I am a collaborator with a company that performs gene therapy outside the body, replicates the modified cell a million-fold, and reintroduces the cells to the body, a process that has cured a fatal disease–pulmonary hypertension–and is undergoing human trials.)

We can design interventions on computers and test them out on increasingly sophisticated biological simulators. One of my primary themes is that information technology grows exponentially, in sharp contrast to the linear growth of hit or miss approaches that have characterized medicine up until recently. As such, these technologies will be a million times more powerful in 20 years (by doubling in power and price performance each year). The genome project, incidentally, followed exactly this trajectory.

Hayflick cites the automobile as an example to support his thesis that you cannot stop aging. Yes, automobiles will wear out if you don’t maintain them adequately. However, we do have the knowledge to perfectly maintain automobiles and completely prevent aging. There are century-old automobiles around in vintage (perfect) condition that are still driven around. That is because the maintenance was sufficiently aggressive for those cars. Most people don’t think it’s worth the trouble with regard to an automobile, but it will be worth the trouble for our bodies. With regard to automobiles, we have all of the knowledge and tools needed to completely stop aging. We do not yet have all of the knowledge and tools to do this with the human body, but that knowledge is growing exponentially.

As for the implications of radical life extension, Hayflick assumes that nothing else would change. But the same technologies that will bring radical life extension will also bring radical expansion of resources (nanoengineered solar panels, water and food technologies) and radical life expansion (merging with the intelligent machines that we are creating, virtual reality from within the nervous system, etc.). We have already democratized the tools of creativity so that kids in their dorm room can create a full-length high-definition motion picture or write software that results in disruptive change (e.g., Google). Hayflick has not considered the implications of these recent developments. We don’t have to do any of these things perfectly (and there is no such thing as perfection in the real world)–just well enough to stay ahead of the curve.

Our intuition is linear, so many scientists, such as Hayflick, think in linear terms and expect that the slow pace of the past will characterize the future. But the reality of progress in information technology is exponential, not linear. My cell phone is a billion times more powerful per dollar than the computer we all shared when I was an undergrad at MIT. And we will do it again in 25 years. What used to take up a building now fits in my pocket, and what now fits in my pocket will fit inside a blood cell in 25 years.

With regard to Hayflick’s own limit, he acts as if that limit is impossible to engineer. Just in recent years we have discovered that just one enzyme controls the telomeres and that cancer cells use telomerase to become immortal. Now, I realize that it is not a simple matter to just apply telomerase to overcome this particular aging limit, as we have to figure out how to administer it, and we don’t want to encourage cancer, but these are all solvable engineering problems.