104 replies to this topic

[kismet]

How difficult is the handling of C57BL/6? I've read they bite, any alternatives? I'm contacting universities in Vienna to find out how to get lab animals in Austria. I'll get back to the topic with more information and ideas tomorrow.

[s123]

Maybe this is a good idea. First take a spoon of dirt (preferably from a graveyard) and mix it with water. Then filter the solution. The filtrate is then used as a source of bacteria. Grow them on peti dishes and separate the different strains. I don't know how to do this (I would need to look it up), you need to extract the enzymes from the bacteria. Finally you inject these enzymes into mice who are fed a sugar rich diet. Then you determine the amount of AGEs in treated mice versus the controls. You can extract the AGEs by dissolving tissue in hot sulfuric acid (if I remember correct AGEs don't solve in hot concentrated sulfuric acid).

Doing this at home seems to be very difficult however I have seen people building electron microscopes at home and surprisingly they work. Michu Kaku even constructed a cyclotron at home when he was a student.

[AgeVivo]

Sorry for the double previous post i must have clicked somewhere by inadvertance

Biting: I used to work a lot with C57BL/6. If you are not 'mean' to them, no worry. One once bited my glove but it was very afraid because i was injecting it sthg for the first time. What if you hold a dog badly? Mice have tiny mouth so be aware of dogs instead ;-) Other usual lab mice are indeed a bit nicer(/doomer) but with more abnormal aging (compared to humans): extract again from here:

Disease Incidence in Inbred Rodents: Some Sobering Anecdotes StrainDiseaseAgeIncidenceCitation
C3H/HeHepatoma1485%(8)
A/HePulmonary Adenoma1890%(8)
BALB/cLymphoma1344%(8)
SJL/JReticulum cell sarcoma1391%(8)
C57BRPituitary tumor"old"33%(8)
BALB/c femaleOvarian granulosa tumor??76%(8)

The price argument given by elrond is convincing to me as it allows us to make late-age studies (1y long, more applicable to us, easier). Hereterogeneous strains are likely to be more reactive i guess? I must say that the mice i got from the pet store are particularly friendly, a child can hold them without danger. That's perhaps because they are next to humans, not in a specific facility room. Afraid people might want to start with a pet store mouse for a few weeks in order to be reassured (..and kill it then? i know that most of them are bought to feed snakes, but still..)

s123, handling a mouse is extremely easy (i would say far easier than a dog or a cat) while what you describe seems difficult, but I'd like to better understand what the idea you started to describe may lead at -who knows, some people might be interested (perhaps in a lab at least).

Edited by AgeVivo, 12 September 2008 - 07:17 AM.

[eternaltraveler]

i wouldn't worry about handling c57bl/6 mice. Sure they might be more prone to bite than others, but they don't bite hard, and they aren't supposed to be pets.

[s123]

s123, handling a mouse is extremely easy (i would say far easier than a dog or a cat) while what you describe seems difficult, but I'd like to better understand what the idea you started to describe may lead at -who knows, some people might be interested (perhaps in a lab at least).

Another thing you could do is to search for bacteria that produce enzymes that can break down lipofuscin. It could be easier than my previous idea. First you need make lipofuscin or maybe some lab is willing to give you some.

Age-related macular degeneration, a major cause of blindness for which no satisfactory treatments exist, leads to a gradual decrease in central high acuity vision. The accumulation of fluorescent materials, called lipofuscin, in retinal pigment epithelial cells of the aging retina is most pronounced in the macula. One of the fluorophores of retinal pigment epithelial lipofuscin has been characterized as A2E, a pyridinium bis-retinoid, which is derived from two molecules of vitamin A aldehyde and one molecule of ethanolamine. An investigation aimed at optimizing the in vitro synthesis of A2E has resulted in the one-step biomimetic preparation of this pigment in 49% yield, readily producing more than 50 mg in one step. These results have allowed for the optimization of HPLC conditions so that nanogram quantities of A2E can be detected from extracts of tissue samples. By using 5% of the extract from individual aged human eyes, this protocol has led to the quantification of A2E and the characterization of iso-A2E, a new A2E double bond isomer; all-trans-retinol and 13-cis-retinol also have been identified in these HPLC chromatograms. Exposure of either A2E or iso-A2E to light gives rise to 4:1 A2E:iso-A2E equilibrium mixtures, similar to the composition of these two pigments in eye extracts. A2E and iso-A2E may exhibit surfactant properties arising from their unique wedge-shaped structures.

PMID: 9843937

Lipofuscin: http://lib.bioinfo.pl/meid:151833

Then you put this lipofuscin with a bacteria onto petri dishes. If there are bacteria that survive than they must be living of lipofuscin. Then you will have found a bacteria that produces an enzyme that could break down lipofuscin.

[msk]

s123, handling a mouse is extremely easy (i would say far easier than a dog or a cat) while what you describe seems difficult, but I'd like to better understand what the idea you started to describe may lead at -who knows, some people might be interested (perhaps in a lab at least).

Another thing you could do is to search for bacteria that produce enzymes that can break down lipofuscin. It could be easier than my previous idea. First you need make lipofuscin or maybe some lab is willing to give you some.

Age-related macular degeneration, a major cause of blindness for which no satisfactory treatments exist, leads to a gradual decrease in central high acuity vision. The accumulation of fluorescent materials, called lipofuscin, in retinal pigment epithelial cells of the aging retina is most pronounced in the macula. One of the fluorophores of retinal pigment epithelial lipofuscin has been characterized as A2E, a pyridinium bis-retinoid, which is derived from two molecules of vitamin A aldehyde and one molecule of ethanolamine. An investigation aimed at optimizing the in vitro synthesis of A2E has resulted in the one-step biomimetic preparation of this pigment in 49% yield, readily producing more than 50 mg in one step. These results have allowed for the optimization of HPLC conditions so that nanogram quantities of A2E can be detected from extracts of tissue samples. By using 5% of the extract from individual aged human eyes, this protocol has led to the quantification of A2E and the characterization of iso-A2E, a new A2E double bond isomer; all-trans-retinol and 13-cis-retinol also have been identified in these HPLC chromatograms. Exposure of either A2E or iso-A2E to light gives rise to 4:1 A2E:iso-A2E equilibrium mixtures, similar to the composition of these two pigments in eye extracts. A2E and iso-A2E may exhibit surfactant properties arising from their unique wedge-shaped structures.

PMID: 9843937

Lipofuscin: http://lib.bioinfo.pl/meid:151833

Then you put this lipofuscin with a bacteria onto petri dishes. If there are bacteria that survive than they must be living of lipofuscin. Then you will have found a bacteria that produces an enzyme that could break down lipofuscin.

Lipofuscin in other animals might be similar enough that some bacteria that for example could degrade lipofuscin from cow hearts would also be able to degrade some parts of human lipofuscin, thus one could buy animal organs, i.e. hearts and livers, meant for food from a supermarket and isolate lipofuscin from those. A problem with this however is that the procedures I've seen for isolating lipofuscin from hearts and livers require expensive ultracentrifuges, the same goes for procedures for making artificial lipofuscin.

[eternaltraveler]

I don't think maestro specifically suggested comparing SENS with lifestyle interventions, rather -as I interpret it- trying studying more narrowed cases such as mice having specific-age-related-disease because i) it might be easier to 'grab' something ii)results of general interventions -such as lifestyle- may not give much insight in mechanisms. Indeed particular features are often a good guide in science. My feeling is that 'at home' environments better suited for testing strategies that 'globally work' and are not well suited for studying too particular aspects that usually require the environment to be extremely well defined. But I keep my eyes and hears open for your concrete ideas of targeted/SENS/general interventions which we might do at home.

I'm trying to think of some things.

How much money is a reasonable cutoff for an "at-home" expense?

I think I might like the idea. If we can get say 50 people to try this distributed research at home, we can get them to screen ideas. The successful 1-5 ideas can be more rigorously tested in the lab.

[eternaltraveler]

are those prices in your Harlan brochure?!?

yes, on their website for old breeders. I know from experience you can get old male breeders that are about a year old.

[eternaltraveler]

Finally you inject these enzymes into mice who are fed a sugar rich diet. Then you determine the amount of AGEs in treated mice versus the controls. You can extract the AGEs by dissolving tissue in hot sulfuric acid (if I remember correct AGEs don't solve in hot concentrated sulfuric acid).

you need some intermideate screening step (test these "enzymes" on AGEs first!), otherwise you will probably just have useless results, or kill 100s of thousands or millions of mice or more for every one you find that helps their AGEs.

Edited by elrond, 12 September 2008 - 10:18 PM.

[s123]

You can also try to find chemicals that lengthen the lifespan. You could buy drugs and then modify them (methylation, acetylation, oxidation, reduction,...). I would start from drugs because these are already complicated molecules, most simple molecules have already been studied and making complex ones from simple compounds is too difficult. You can of course also use animal drugs, supplements, organic dyes,... The compounds that you synthesize could be things that nobody else has ever made. Then you fed it to mice or c. elegans. If they live longer then you have success.

It's not so difficult, you simply need some basic chemicals, lab stuff, mice and drugs.

[AgeVivo]

Having a few mice at home is easy, fun, and could help fight aging if we organize together to distribute lifespan tests. A few mice are already being handled and suggest that the project is easily feasible. The first set of experiments could typically be a control, a group with a known product that extend lifespan (eg NDGA; CR might be difficult to do for beginners) and possibly a 3rd group to test a new intervention (under discussion).

[eternaltraveler]

i am interested in this idea. But not so much for full length lifespan studies, but for pilot studies involving specific interventions with testable outcomes.

[AgeVivo]

How much money is a reasonable cutoff for an "at-home" expense?

• simplistic conditions: as posted above, having 2 cages of 4 petstore-mice each would could 120$ initially and 10$ per month over 2 years.
  The trouble is that animals don't have birth certificates (at least where I went) and it lasts 2 years for a full lifespan.
• correct settings: with 14$/aged mouse (retired breeder (male)) it becomes 230$ initially and 10$ per month over 1 year
• fast screening: 3 cages of 5 age-mice each would cost 330$ initially then 15$ per month

This is not free so one might start with one cage and one petstore-mouse to get hands on (a little like me; 55$) and then see (you won't resist -mice are cute;-)

i am interested in this idea. But not so much for full length lifespan studies, but for pilot studies involving specific interventions with testable outcomes.

Then it might indeed be really expensive, of course don't hesitate to post concreate ideas, we'll see. In this post i suggested to measure longevity-markers to sort out what kind of methionine restriction (more generally what kind of strategy) is likely to be optimum. In my mind such a work must typically be done in a standard lab because measurements require expensive reactives and machinery. It is an MFURI project (typically great for undergraduates to do smthg usefull and get acquainted with longevity research in a short period of time).

Rapid tests on mice (1 day to 2 months long) are done in many labs, but not lifespan tests: there is a huge need and I believe it is a reason why we are only discovering various longevity strategies now. To me, having mice simply live at home is fun and easy (perfectly compatible with personal & professional life)(no need to anesthetize/kill them/do laborious work) and in such conditions 1y is actually quite short (by the time i registrered to imminst and MF, how many strategies could have i tested?!). This is why i personally am much more inclined to lifespan tests

[s123]

How much money is a reasonable cutoff for an "at-home" expense?

• simplistic conditions: as posted above, having 2 cages of 4 petstore-mice each would could 120$ initially and 10$ per month over 2 years.
  The trouble is that animals don't have birth certificates (at least where I went) and it lasts 2 years for a full lifespan.
• correct settings: with 14$/aged mouse (retired breeder (male)) it becomes 230$ initially and 10$ per month over 1 year
• fast screening: 3 cages of 5 age-mice each would cost 330$ initially then 15$ per month

This is not free so one might start with one cage and one petstore-mouse to get hands on (a little like me; 55$) and then see (you won't resist -mice are cute;-)

i am interested in this idea. But not so much for full length lifespan studies, but for pilot studies involving specific interventions with testable outcomes.

Then it might indeed be really expensive, of course don't hesitate to post concreate ideas, we'll see. In this post i suggested to measure longevity-markers to sort out what kind of methionine restriction (more generally what kind of strategy) is likely to be optimum. In my mind such a work must typically be done in a standard lab because measurements require expensive reactives and machinery. It is an MFURI project (typically great for undergraduates to do smthg usefull and get acquainted with longevity research in a short period of time).

Rapid tests on mice (1 day to 2 months long) are done in many labs, but not lifespan tests: there is a huge need and I believe it is a reason why we are only discovering various longevity strategies now. To me, having mice simply live at home is fun and easy (perfectly compatible with personal & professional life)(no need to anesthetize/kill them/do laborious work) and in such conditions 1y is actually quite short (by the time i registrered to imminst and MF, how many strategies could have i tested?!). This is why i personally am much more inclined to lifespan tests

I don't believe that you will have much pleasure from having these mice at home because if you want to have good scientific results then you will need to keep those mice in a very sterile environment. If you don't keep them safe from infectious diseases then they could die prematurely and ruin your experiment. You will for example need to wash your hands before touching them.

Interesting things that you could do are:
- Control mice
- Heat shocks
- CR 3 times feeding a day
- CR + alternating fasting (1 day fast, 1 day food)
- CR + methionine restricted diet
- CR + various supplements like resveratrol and lithium (extends the lifespan of c. elegans)
- CR + heat shocks

You don’t need to do all these tests, these are only examples of what you can do. The best thing is to do is (I think) to buy a male and female mice and breed with them. Then you use their children, this will eliminate as much genetic influence a possible. You will need to be very careful about the amount of food that the mice receive.

Here is how you can do it:
- Choose for dry food
- Put the dry food into your oven until you are sure that it doesn’t contain any water (water adds weight, food can absorb water from the air)
- Weigh a certain amount of food and give it to them
- Weigh all the food that they have left + all the bits that have fallen on the floor of the cage

The parameters that you can check:
- Lifespan
- Length
- Weight
- Size of belly
- Body temperature (measured at the same spot at about the same time everyday)
- Blood glucose (If you have a devise that people with diabetes use)
- Ketones in urine (special indicator strips that you can buy at the pharmacy for people with diabetes, this is useful if you want to put the mice on a ketogenic diet)

You will need to document everything as good as possible, preferably also photograph everything. You will for example need to use the same thermometer every time and mention the brand of thermometer in your report.

[AgeVivo]

Hi s123,

thank you for your detailed analysis, concerns and suggestions, it greatly helps test the project and make it concrete:

• Fun
  

  I don't believe that you will have much pleasure

  In the contrary I believe I will! : testing/speeding interventions for longevity is great, I personally don't think I'll ever change feelings about that; I've done hard work with mice and rats in the past, it was nice; so far mice at home are really fun, and I expect this to remain true but that's indeed because I don't plan to spend an hour per day on it: I like my family, professional, scientific, and 'forum' life
• Scientific validity
  

  if you want to have good scientific results then you will need to keep those mice in a very sterile environment

  In the contrary I believe we won't need/want a sterile environment!!! I admit I've been thinking like you from June 2006 to recently. Here is an extract of a post that i wrote above in this thread:
  

  The idea of MPrize @ home initially shoked the scholar guy that I was. At home it is not possible to standardize everything like in a lab and more importantly to be in a 'pathogen free' environment. But the more I considered it, the more I took some distance with the strict rules I had learned, and found that some bad lab conditions are good in a distributed environment. They then have another meaning.
  In a lab, the big danger with pathogens is that they don't create smooth heterogeneity but rather typically either increase the death rate of the unlucky group independently of which treatment it has (=> possibly wrong results), or they increase the death rate of all groups and you end up studying MHV, not aging.
  In a distributed environment (@'homes') we can distribute animals in as many places as possible so that 1) we don't put all our eggs in the same basket (ie we have less risk of something condemning the whole experiment) and 2) in our aging conditions we include colds and any disease that affect individuals. If a disease is known to affect all mice at home, then it is normal to include it in our search for life extension. If it affect one third of the population, our sampling should be representative.
  This allows us to test if anti-aging drugs do extend lifespans in 'normal' conditions (i.e. not 'no stress no disease' conditions) which is, in fact, obviously extremely important. Becarefull however, there is a pre-requisite (which is in general not found in labs): here we see that the number of homes is important for statistical power, not only the number of mice (this is already the case for the number of cages, in a lab). We should try to have many homes and few animals per home rather than few homes and many animals per home
  Since it is partly a non-conventional approach I would expect reactions from experienced people and new ideas from non-experienced people...

  ...and your are doing both, nice!
• What to test

  heat shocks, various diets (eg CR & methionine restriction)

  This is typically the type of experiments I'd personnally like to do although I don't think CR is technically feasible in a first set of experiments (see below why; it depends on participants). A few remarks on the choices of experiments:
  • don't hesitate to detail some of those experiments or give other examples
  • at the end the consensus might or might not be our prefered experiment; some labs may wish to do what we didn't choose (that would be great i think)
  • we might email or PM each other when we have a bad opinion about a much promoted supplement
  • I might start building a list of things to test: something like a very simple forum where each thread is a particular experiment, anyone could answer but only people participating would be able to vote
• Which mice

  male and female mice and breed them

  Yes and no: it's a little like pathogens, 'normal' mice might be better to test than 'specific mice'. I think the main point is feasibility: we want to start at late ages (eg 1y) and don't want to pay much (14$ per C57BL6). Breeding is perhaps a way to get cheap old mice but that's tough imho and if you send them to other participants to spread their personal diseases to all homes which we don't want to do.
• Amount of food
  Hmm.. great but in a first round I don't think participants want to do all that (including me, unless all other participants want it). I'd prefer to "walk before running". That's why I wouldn't start with CR or CR+something.
• Other parameters than lifespan
  great but the feasibility of MPrize @ home mostly depend on how many participate so I don't want to force anyone to do those things. I've done most of them and seen them in the past, overall it takes time. In principle for the last measures you described, you typically remove food and water overnight and do measurements in the morning. Weighing animals typically requires a cooking scale (some are cheap but you still need to buy it if you don't have one; an adult mouse weights between 20g and 40g), glucose and ketones indicators and thin,rounded thermometers are relatively expensive (50 bucks for 20?) and you need to be able to use them (blood drop, specific handling on mice to make them pee, mini cage to introduce thermometer in anus). How do you measure the size of belly?
• Photograph techniques
  in the next post I'll show you that my mice have started making a whole in the plexiglas cage... Don't buy cages for now unless you accept to buy other ones later: we need to see which ones are best suited (metal is solid but food & litter might be thrown out of the cage; glass is best but probably expensive). I'll consider other cages next week-end, if you want/can, photograph cages in your local petstore (note the price also), we'll compare them

Edited by AgeVivo, 16 September 2008 - 10:58 PM.

[AgeVivo]

Here is the promised photograph. On the left-hand corner you can see that the mice slightly enlarged the existing hole for the water bottle (appearently not to escape but to scratch their teeth; in red i drew the initial hole). I removed the upper level (and reorganized the cage) so that they can access to drink but not to the hole above it.

In conclusion, wait before buying a cage now: we need more information about cages. A plexiglas cage is not necessarily a bad choice: it depends whether in the long tem mice make new holes or simply enlarge existing holes they can access => this week-end I plan to ask it in a petstore. On your side, if you feel like searching for cages to buy online/ post photographs from your local petstore, go for it!

Attached Files

•  cageSetting2.JPG   30.61KB   3 downloads

Edited by AgeVivo, 17 September 2008 - 10:26 PM.

[AgeVivo]

very detailed features of C57BL6 mice:
http://www.harlaneur...ten/c57bl-6.pdf

here is indeed the 14$ price for C57BL6 retired breeders:
http://www.harlan.co...dels/c57bl6.asp
from there you can look at other types of mice (and associated prices)

[AgeVivo]

Mice need smthg to scratch their teeth...a specific stone
That's what I was told today in a petstore. It can typically be a piece of wood or a dedicated stone (cleaner; 2.5€ in petstores), rather than the cage itself . In lab facilities no wood/stone is added but I remember that mice indeed sometimes attack old lab cages. IMHO if we want "normal" conditions (instead of long teeths) we want a dedicated stone in the cage.

Best type of cage: plexiglass or glass? (under investigation)
For now I'll check that a plexiglas cage with a dedicated stone works (I'm giving access to the water-bottle-hole again and I'll see if they still enlarge it). Metal cages (i.e. metal bars) are definitely NOT what we want because mice spill things out. Glass cages could be better (resistant, nice, clean, 20€ in the petstore); they don't come with a toy nor a water bottle but to can buy and add that. Please say if you have a preference.

Near-home petstore seems better than online shopping (do you agree?)
We agreed to buy animals online (very probably retired C57BL6 male breeders from Harlan).
For materials I'm personnally more in favor of your local petstore: I'm pretty sure there is one next to your place, and it allows you to ask for advice and have everything there. Don't hesitate to say if you have a different opinion.

Edited by AgeVivo, 20 September 2008 - 06:29 PM.

[AgeVivo]

Best type of cage: glass !
I've met someone who similarly tried different things (with other rodents than mice) and told me that wood or stones didn't prevent the animals from scratching the cage. Plus overnight I confirm that when I give acess to the hole the mice enlarged it, although they also scratched their teeth on the stone. So Glass cages are definitely better
resistant, nice, clean, 20€ in the petstore; they don't come with a toy nor a water bottle but to can buy and add that.

Cages: near-home petstore seems better than online shopping
I foresee that if our first set of experiments turns out to be a good 'proof of concept' then it is likely that more people will participate, from imminst (/MR, fight-aging, CRsociety,...) but also from people we meet in petstore.
- 10 participants = 2 or 3 groups per year
- 50 participants = 10 to 15 groups per year
etc

[PWAIN]

Does anyone know if and where I can get C57BL6 mice or other lab mice in Australia? Importing in not an option becuse of import restrictions - it can be done but is major difficult.
My google search brought up nothing and the one local lab supplier weren't able to help at all.

Thanks

[AgeVivo]

you may try http://www.harlan.com/contactus.asp

http://guide.labanim...4...a=1&b=50860 : C57BL6 mice may be bought from
Ace Animals, Inc.
Animal Technologies, Ltd.
B&K Universal Ltd.
Charles River Laboratories
Charles River Laboratories Italia S.r.l.
Charles River Laboratories UK
Elevage Janvier
Harlan
Harlan Laboratories, Ltd.
Harlan Netherlands, B.V.
Hilltop Lab Animals
Scanbur AB Sweden
Simonsen Laboratories, Inc.
Taconic
Taconic Europe
The Jackson Laboratory
Xenogen Biosciences
labanimal.com similarly says who sells cages, foods, etc
Cages, as discussed above, might be better bought in your local petstore
Food too, unless our first set of experiments uses specific food. Need to investigate how much it costs for special foods

[s123]

http://www.imminst.o...o...c=24454&hl=

Another topic about doing synthetic biology at home.

The era of garage biology is upon us. Want to participate? Take a moment to buy yourself a molecular biology lab on eBay. A mere $1,000 will get you a set of precision pipettors for handling liquids and an electrophoresis rig for analyzing DNA.

Could this be of use for the MPrize@home project? It could be made cheaper if people would work together.

[AgeVivo]

uh..interesting...300$ is already quite much to me, and i want to focus directly on anti-aging (especially needs that aren't really met in labs): optimize usefulness and costs wrt our aims. other people might have other point of views

[AgeVivo]

made a summary of our progress so far on MPrize @home, on MF's forum

as soon as we are 10, we can start the real experiment!

[Bram]

Have you considered possible problems with legality? As far as I know in the US you can do pretty much everything you want with mice bred especially for research purposes, but they're far stricter in Europe. Aren't you in France, AgeVivo?
http://en.wikipedia....ing_regulations
Not sure if this would fall under the category of animal testing or simply treatment of pets; guess it depends on what you want to do with the data.

[AgeVivo]

Thanks. Pets at home (take care of them all their life, give them good food, no pain/anesthesia). I'm in southern europe but everywhere what counts is to respect animals: they are not 'things'. In fact, in the petstore where I went, they are used to have people buying mice to feed snakes (!) and they are happy to see people making mice live.

Edited by AgeVivo, 29 September 2008 - 09:34 PM.

[AgeVivo]

Tommorrow, you might speak about MPrize @home in Belgium:
http://mfoundation.o...read.php?p=4398

As soon as we are 10 and have choosen what to test, we can start!

[AgeVivo]

Sorry guys for my lack of time to keep you updated recently.
The mice are doing well, a few things still need to be considered:
Cage
I'm still planning to buy a cage made out of glass but before I'd like to take time to know the advized surface and volume for 4 or 5 mice. Does anybody know? The plexiglass cage isn't being attacked anymore, now that I've put things against the holes so that mice can't put their snout far outside to enlarge holes.
Mice
I'd like to take the time to ask Harlan/Jax i) how much transportation costs, ii) whether they can deliver us at home (i.e. not at an official lab), iii) how old retired breeders usually are. Does anybody know?
MPrize
I'm looking at how to participate in the longevity prize and perhaps rejuvenation prize: [url="http://<A%20href="http://mfoundation.org/forums/showpost.php?p=4677&postcount=4"]http://mfoundation.org/forums/showpost.php...amp;postcount=4[/url]
experiments and participants
i'm not too much worried about that, for now i'm still tuning the design of MPrize @ home.

[lucid]

Sweet Agevivo,
Great to see that you are doing something like this. I had a similar idea a while ago and made some posts:

Objective:
Allow people all over the world to contribute to LE research by raising their own mouse (or mice) under various explanatory variables and controls and document the entire process on a web server. Resulting techniques resulting in mice with long lifespans might be reproduced by other users. Eventually, scientists will use our anecdotal evidence to perform statistically powered studies. This could be used for the Rejuvenation and the standard M-Prize.

Background:
Few studies address the effects of rigorous supplementation on the lifespan of mice. (Here is a good one krillin linked to a while back) Scientists aren't prone to conducting studies with many more than 2 or 3 explanatory variables and with good reason (they are much more expensive). It doesn't make tons of sense that most of us are on CR or taking a CR mimic and on a heavy supplementation regimen and we don't have any mice studies to support the benefits of cumulative supplementation. Perhaps studies of mice on CR, with heavy supplementation, in positive environments etc.. may result in non-additive life extension benefits as multiple aging pathways are being hit.

Why decentralized?
I personally would be much more inclined to raise my own mouse than donate 1000$ for the following reasons:
1) I will feel like i personally contributed to aging research. (I won't be bragging in a bar 200 years in the future about donating money, but I might just brag about raising the first 10 year old mouse)
2) Having pets is fun (especially if you have a kid to take care of it).
3) Individuals are going to test a much broader range of experimental variables than a single lab could.
4) This setup should follow some similiar rules as markets do: Most people will likely try to refine what is working while some try much more radical procedure.
5) Even with a reasonably small personal cost (of 500$ ish), someone can raise a mouse and really feel like they contributed.
6) If you get a mouse to live a long time, face it, you are going to feel pretty cool.
7) You get to test out your own regimen.
8) There are lots and lots and lots of people in the world.

This idea is in its infancy, but I am personally very serious about it if it recieves lots of support here. If there is support, I would love to help in designing a webserver and raise a mouse.

http://www.imminst.o...use-t17617.html
http://www.imminst.o...showtopic=17547
As far as information theory, this sort of research would represent the 'swarm intelligence approach'. Individuals could pick whatever interventions they desired when rearing their mouse. However they would be more likely to use better established LE techniques while being less likely to apply less established techniques. With many people over some period of time a very large experimental space would be developed. What is important is that the experimental interventions would adjust continuously shifting more or less immediately to test new ideas as they gain strength. At any rate, If experiments are well recorded on some public server; this would be a great way to participate in research. I would be very interested in buying a cage and raising some mice once I get out of college.

Look forward to hearing about how your experience goes. I think that this idea could be big if we got 20 something people to raise mice.

[AgeVivo]

Hey Lucid,

A. Nice! I see that we mainly followed the same - pragmatic, realistic, lucid - analysis!!:

WHY EVERYONE INTERESTED IN LONG LIFE SHOULD PARTICIPATE
1. Lifespan: the best guide - by far - to find/check how to live longer is to test it in animals that should react similarly to humans.
2. Mouse: all things considered, the best animal for that is the mouse (and 'normal' mouse: not short lived due to some strange pathology).
3. Me: There are surprisingly few such experiments done by labs; well, i can participate...
4. Time issue: Mice live 2 or 3 years? Well, we don't really have much choice. So let's hurry up rather than being discouraged. Some choice in fact: we can start with pre-aged mice.
5. Parallelization: see how many we are in this forums! That's the key to solve the time issue: let's parallelize the work!

Other details then come naturally : the fact that it is really feasible and quite simple and funny at home.

B. Having everyone test its own condition and having 10 people sharing the same conditions might be 2 extreme approaches; I have a feeling that one condition per mouse wouldn't lead us anywhere. Perhaps STHG INTERMEDIATE?: 5 mice or so per condition? I don't feel like it right now, but I need to analyze that. Of course it is a tradeoff between chances to discover smthg and robustness of discovery.

C. Here is a rapid TOP-DOW SEARCH of approaches to fight aging at home, that i'm doing live in the hope that it could give us a better view of what to do:

- In our everyday life
the best strategy to solve an issue is usually to a) do a rapid serie of {test a solution / analyse its immediate impact}... if it doesn't work, b) to ask/search if the solution already exists, and c) to think seriously and d) do more rigorous/slow series.
- Examples concerning aging:
(a) oh yesterday's carrot juice seems beneficial to the mouse; let's keep it and add...spinach; etc. Example of potential trouble with that approach: sugar is good in the short term but not in the long term.
This trouble might be partially overcome by regularly measuring predictors of long life as established with CR/MR/other (eg blood glutathinone levels).
(b) design a yeast (or fly, or fungus..: sthg that doesn't live long) experiment in petri dishes such that yeast only children of long-lived individuals survive. Do several generations if possible, until longevity is striking. Study what happened. © baby aren't old, so either germlines are not old, or the intracellular/extracellular environment of the egg cell. perhaps we can test the hypothesis; etc
(d) A fun research project for optimized nutrition, with and without fasting
=> mprize at home?

AgeVivo