Scientists in Boston have made an astounding discovery, taking aging mice and turning them young again, like tiny little Benjamin Buttons.

Just like the title character in the Hollywood film version of "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," the mice appeared to not only stop aging but grow younger.

Molecular biologist Dr. Ronald DePinho at Harvard Medical School in Boston was able to pull off the feat by playing with "telomeres" -- the protective DNA caps on the ends of our chromosomes.

The caps, which have long been implicated in aging, prevent our chromosomes from "fraying" and the genes inside them from "unravelling."

Scientists have long known that a little bit of our telomeres erodes each time our cells divide. Previous research has shown that people with longer telomeres tend to live longer, whereas those with shorter telomeres suffer more from age-related diseases, such as Alzheimer's.

A few years ago, DePinho and his research team devised a way to engineer mice so that they lacked a working copy of the gene that regulates the production of telomerase, which is an enzyme that strengthens telomeres and whose production declines over time.

Instead of dying at three years old, the genetically engineered mice died at about six months. By the time they died, they had become infertile, their coat hair had turned grey and they had developed age-related conditions such as osteoporosis.

DePinho wondered whether he could reverse the aging in the mice if they suddenly began making telomerase again.

So he took a group of engineered mice and added back the telomerase gene, but left it inactive. His team then allowed the mice to age for six months, until they were the equivalent of 80-year-old humans. They then gave the mice a drug that "switched on" the telomerase gene.

One month later, not only did the new production of telomerase stop the aging process in the mice, it appeared to actually undo the premature aging so that the mice became the physiological equivalent of young adults.

Even DePinho was surprised at how effective the experiment was.

"We expected to see a slowing or a stabilization of aging. Instead, what we found was a dramatic reversal in aging," he told CTV.

"The shrunken brains increased, new neurons were formed, the coat hair was restored to a new sheen."

DePinho notes that the treated mice went on to have a normal lifespan. They were simply healthier and biologically younger.

DePinto and his colleagues stress that the study was a "proof-of-concept" experiment, designed to show that changes to telomerase can affect aging. There are still many questions to answer before an experiment can be tried on humans.

For example, some research has shown that telomerase seems to help cancer tumours grow faster. DePinho says his team didn't observe any cancers in the mice, but then the telomerase was activated for only one month.

"This teaches us something fundamental about aging: that aged tissue -- even very aged tissue -- retains the ability to rejuvenate itself," he said.

DePinho says it's possible the method could be used to treat people with rare genetic premature aging syndromes. Whether the technique could help reverse normal aging still remains to be seen. Still, he says the findings were worth sharing and appear in the journal Nature.

"The results were so dramatic that we wanted to get them out to the research community as soon as possible so we could inspire the research community to move forward on these findings," DePinho said.

source: http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/Health/20101129/reversing-aging-mice-101129/

+1 for transhumanism.

That is fucking AWESOME.

i was always under the impression aged tissue always had the ability to rejuv its self its just the damage being cause by the electrons in our bodies is to much damage for the cells to rejuv fast enough

i came across a study where scientist were able to extend the life of worms and mince 2x time there normal life span by using some information they gathered for the parrot that lives 80+ years and is still a small animal and some underwater creature

the reason we live so short lives is because throughout history we mate with younger, attractive mates. thus gene disorders like alzheimers hadnt shown up by the time a person conceived a child. turtles live incredibly long lives because they continue to mate at very very old ages. the gene disorders are still there but much less prevalent. always found this subject interesting.

arnt most gene disorders due to low population of humanity and thus inbreeding occurred? or one reason, i think at one point the human population was knocked down to a simple 21 indvs then grew from there

thats pretty cool, hopefully they can use this in some sort of ethically inoffensive way.

See the only problem with this is that the gene that is taken out would stop our bodies from aging; but would stop our bodys from producing cells and from healing naturally. In essence, it would kill us from the inside out. Although they would not publish it. Our bodys do rely on aging. although you can take the gene out and back in the problem is the body wont keep letting you do this. Eventually the body will refuse the gene seeing it as a foreign invader. Plus should one contract even a slight disease, something such as the flu, it would immedietly attack the body and without the ability to reproduce cellls from the constant aging process of the body, the virus and or disease would irradicate the body, or even turn into something even worse. Although i feel that genetic research is a good thing to be doing, I feel that they are straying from the important things and going into fields which are not as important as the fields of genetics such as curing diseases that are potentially fatal in the long run such as HIV/AIDS. With genetic research, we could not only add the gene for fighting off such diseases, but make the world have a brighter future where terminal illness' are just a thing of the ever expanding history.

interesting...

this reminds me of the research concerning oxidative stress and its implications on aging.

Very very cool read. Thanks for sharing.

Very interesting



I don't think you read this clearly. They didn't take any gene out to stop the aging process. They didn't stop the body from producing cells because if that had happened the mice would have died quite quickly. They simply showed that the fraying of chromosomes that the telomeres which prevent the fraying is closely linked to the aging process.

This kind of research could lead to cures for degenerative diseases... especially those linked to old age such as Alzheimers. There's lots of diseases besides AIDS... they need to do research in all areas and think outside the box, thats how scientific breakthroughs happen.

This post was edited by thenoose on Nov 30 2010 01:40am