Well first of all I am new to the forums here, so Hi. I'm currently an Industrial Engineering student at Georgia tech and am plugging my way through 'Molecular Biology of the Cell' in my spare time.
The 7 pillars of SENS apparently are of different importances to different species (e.g: telomere length in mice is of little relative importance compared to its importance in humans or drosophila). Therefore it hardly needs being stated that understanding which pillars are most important to humans (and mice for the M-Prize) is not trivial.
The obvious solution has been to test possible cures for each of the 7 pillars and note the effectiveness of such measures. Another method which appears to be used less frequently (because we don't seem as interested in making things live shorter lives) is to inject pathogens into an animals system and monitor the severity of the animal's response.
I suppose each pillar could be rated in terms of how much positively or negatively enhancing each of the causes of aging effect a) the average lifespan of a species and b) the average fitness of a species.
I distinguish between a) and b) because geriatric solutions may increase lifespan but have much more limited impacts on aging and fitness.
Additionally its worth mentioning that if we were to identify one pillar of most importance and begin to remedy those causes of aging we would likely find that adults who were more susectable to cause X (which we remedied) at the age of 80 would be more susectable to cause Y (which we haven't yet remedied) at age 130. Hence X is the current bottleneck at age 80 and Y would begin to bottleneck around 130 if we remedy X. Of course things wouldn't be this simple.
One could argue that looking at causes of death would be a good indicator for where bottlenecks occur as they well may be. That said, curing cancer or even correcting the underlying causes of heart disease may have large impacts on lifespan but much smaller impacts on age or fitness.
Furthermore, perhaps activating telomerase in human cells may decrease average lifespan by increasing the incidence of cancer but it may decrease effects of aging and increase fitness by helping to end cell senescence.
**Edit** Hmm just read Prometheus' post on how telomerase may not increase likelyhood of cancer. So I guess this is a pretty bad example.***
So I guess this is an invitation to rank the pillars according to their effect on a) lifespan and b) on perceived age or fitness in humans. (and mice if you want to)
I'm not a phd so I can only hope this isn't a stupid post. Cheers.
Edited by lucid, 23 February 2007 - 09:29 PM.
