LONGECITY

Forgive me for my ignorance but I had a very simple observation that makes me wonder if we already might have an answer to increase longevity.

Bear with me here.

By the way, I recently bought Aubrey's 'Ending Aging' and am enjoying it very much- (I was surprised that he basically threw out calorie restriction, saying he doubts it will have much impact at all on humans but anyway I digress...

I also recently got a copy of Michael Rose's book "The Long Tomorrow-How advances in evolutionary biology can help us postpone aging"

Then I just happen to pick up the LA Times (oct 15th) that had an article about longevity. In one article, it mentioned something that confirmed the basic premise of Michael Rose's book.

It said, (citing the New England Centenarian Study- 40,000 centenarians) that "Women who were able to conceive and give birth naturally in their 40s are 4 times as likely to reach age 100 than women who last gave birth in their 30s or earlier."

So, do we not already have a proof of concept (in humans) of something that will delay the aging process (late reproduction)???

And now to my basic point- Wouldnt a genetic profile of these same women, somehow identifying which genes are preferentially expressed, wouldnt this set us on a path, at least a direction for finding longevity genes???

I have no idea if this is even possible, hence, somebody 'set me straight'--

Well, why not do your "genetic profile" with people who actually did live to 100, rather than merely those who are somewhat more likely to do so as gauged by late reproduction. For example, how do you like this effort? Doing it by gene expression as you suggest, rather than sequencing, would be exciting too, but i'm not sure if anyone with serious possibilities is pursuing that. Difficult and expensive, certainly (like sequencing). So no reason to set you straight at all, these are great ways to discover longevity genes.

For example, how do you like this effort?

Dubbed the Methuselah Project

Well, they have a good name anyway. )

Check here for a more detailed discussion of SENS-E.

I don't think we need to study only 100 year olds. We can study the entire population and build the regressions that identify all genes that play a role in factors that lead to aging diseases. From there we can tease out the important regulatory genes, repair mechanisms and "hubs" that have the most impact and then see if we can tweak those. Even if thousands of genes are implicated in the aging process we should have enough variable data to do this with the large variety in demographics. Costs to do sequencing and transcription analysis are plummeting and crunching the numbers is only going to get easier.

Targeted genome searches like this screen for osteoarthritis will even unravel the data we need as they will demonstrate pieces of the puzzle and also find the upstream regulatory genes that overlap with the dozens of other aging diseases that have common genetic dysregulation . This type of focused research will probably be where the most funds will be invested over the next decade as people will put money behind specific diseases. One of the key issues with this approach though is that the datasets from these vertical research efforts needs to be aggregated and curated into common databases and models. Not doing this from the outset is going to delay the ultimate value from these models by decades.
Edited by maestro949, 22 October 2007 - 11:18 AM.

John Schloendorn said "Well, why not do your "genetic profile" with people who actually did live to 100, rather than merely those who are somewhat more likely to do so as gauged by late reproduction.'

I think that understanding the gene expression involved in those that reproduce later is completely different than merely looking at those who live to around 100. The point being, we want to extend maximum life span not just achieve a similar span as the current longest lived. This late reproduction gives us something very specific to look at that is already showing to increase maximum life span. Rose showed that in flies, after 12 generations or so (as I remember), they were able to double their life span. Intuitively, finding the late reproduction genes may give us the vehicle to extend life well beyond the normal life span. I would think that the fact that we already have this first step of information in humans with the centenarian study could lead us on a path to understanding the way well past 100.

There is no doubt that if people with potential to live over 100 have children their progeny should manifest even longer lifespans. The problem is, how to identify them whilst they are still in healthy reproductive years? The obvious answer would be genetic testing but there isnt enough information on the genes responsible yet so we can only rely on family history..

Where can we get more updates on research like this?