For example, in 2016, a US company called Ambrosia started charging patients £6,500 for blood infusions, with the chief executive officer Jesse Karmazin promising that the technique “ pretty close” to immortality. Some companies have been trying profit from these desires by unscrupulously proffering quick fixes for ageing. Instead, consumers want something like the Brown-Séquard Elixir: an anti-ageing pill. Moreover, these genes were found in many different animals, from fruit flies to mice, raising the tantalising possibility that they might be found in humans as well.īut of course, we cannot silence genes in humans like we do in the laboratory. Over the next few decades, many further genes were discovered to play a role in ageing, and silencing them had similarly amazing effects on lifespan. "They discovered that if a particular gene was switched off in worms, their lifespan increased by 230 per cent"īuoyed by this news, researchers worldwide continued to investigate. And if physiological age is under genetic control, it’s something we might be able to manipulate artificially. While we can’t stop time, these results showed that physiological ageing was something that is at least partly under genetic control. This finding had an amazing implication: it showed that biological age (how much time we’ve been alive) and physiological age (the physical changes to our body that happen with advancing age) aren't intrinsically linked. Moreover, these animals behaved like young worms at ages when their normal brethren had already died. In 1993, a group of researchers led by a scientist named Cynthia Kenyon discovered that if a particular gene (daf-2) was switched off in worms, they would grow and develop as normal (ie, without entering the alternative dauer life cycle state), but their lifespan increased by about 230 per cent. There are limitations to the dauer state-the worms can only form dauers early in their developmental cycle, and they can’t become dauers more than once-but it’s still an incredible increase in lifespan with no apparent ill-effects.
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When the environment becomes less stressful, (for example, if they can sense food supplies), the worms return to their normal state and continue to live out their full lifespan as if nothing ever happened. Worms can exist in this state for months. They’re much thinner, and can’t eat: a cuticle grows over their mouth as part of the transformative process. (Dauer is a German word meaning "to endure".) Dauer worms are strikingly different from normal worms. However, if during its early development the worm is stressed- for example, by a lack of food-it can transform itself into an entirely different state known as a "dauer" form. elegans have a normal lifespan of around 19 days. In the perfect conditions of a laboratory, C. elegans, this millimetre-long worm has a fascinating characteristic which makes it an ideal choice of study. Known affectionately to those who study it as C. To test this, they looked at an unlikely animal: a tiny, transparent worm called Caenorhabditis elegans. Such a difference in lifespan indicates at least some element of genetic involvement. For example, a rat lives for three years whereas a healthy chinchilla can live for ten. However, some researchers reasoned, very similar animals have dramatically different lifespans. Because ageing is such a complex process, there was never going to be a single gene which we could switch off to stop it. One intriguing question was whether there was any genetic component to ageing. Many scientists have taken these questions into the lab in an attempt to answer them. "A 13th century philosopher thought virgin girls' breath could reverse the ageing process" Why should simply being alive for longer impede this ability? We can fall, break a bone, and the two ends will obligingly grow back together.
But the difference between cars and bodies is that humans have an amazing ability to self-repair. They believed that just like old cars, after a certain point, bodies could no longer cope with what was being asked of them. For a long time, people thought of ageing simply as the result of "wear and tear": continuous use of our bodies inevitably led to mechanical failure and harm. For no apparent reason, our bodies slowly begin to decline in very similar ways.
We’re so used to ageing that it takes a minute or two to consider what an odd process it is. But just because none of these bizarre remedies or escapades led to a "cure" for ageing doesn’t mean scientists stopped trying to investigate it.
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