As reported in Science News, Cynthia Kenyon has watched microscopic worms of the species Caenorhabditis elegans live far longer than they should. She has seen mutant strains of this worm, which is normally dead and gone after a mere 2 or 3 weeks, last well into their second month. It’s as if a person lived to be 200 years old. Kenyon’s long-lived worms are a result of mutations in individual genes. That’s a radical notion to many scientists who have long thought of aging as an uncontrollable process of deterioration that isn’t regulated by single genes. “There have to be genes that affect life span,” counters Kenyon of the University of California, San Francisco. Noting the dramatic differences in life span among various animals–a mouse may last for 2 years while a bat can live for half a century–Kenyon has become convinced that longevity has evolved in animals many times. She argues that her long-lived nematodes can reveal some of the fundamental molecular biology that controls longevity in more-complex organisms, even people.
Over the past few months, Kenyon’s team and several other groups of worm researchers have documented an unexpectedly large number of genes controlled by [the worm’s] hormonal system, including genes involved in stress responses and antimicrobial actions. This aging pathway appears to be at work in mammals, also. Two research teams have shown that altering how mice respond to insulin or a related hormone can extend the animals’ lives, raising the prospect that manipulating these hormones in people could slow aging or enable them to age with better health. “There’s a possibility in humans that a similar aging pathway is at work,” says Catherine Wolkow of the National Institute of Aging in Bethesda, Md. If so, there’s a chance that Kenyon and other scientists like Trudy MacKay and David Sinclair can one day give us all biblical life spans.
That is, if we don’t die of cancer first. The complex metabolic pathways involved in cancer have so far prevented the development of a magic bullet like antibiotics to stop this deadly killer. But if the deterministic-style drugs we’ve developed are unable to halt cancer growth, there’s growing evidence that supporting straightforward nutritional pathways may be the most effective cancer treatment instead. Of course, the easy progress in cancer treatment for now remains in more aggressive curbing of smoking, not just of tobacco but…<GASP>…holy cow, er, chicken, er, pig – barbeque? This Southern boy would just about rather die of cancer than give up America’s national cuisine!