LONGECITY

Over the last year on the Sunday Evening Update you have come to expect top-notch guests from the world of science and life extension. From cutting edge researchers to headline grabbing advocates to leaders of the world's most forward thinking organizations. This week meets those expectations with legendary evolutionary biologist Dr. Michael Rose of the University of California Irvine.

UC Irvine Faculty Homepage

Sunday Evening Update, live interview with Dr. Rose 6pm EST Sunday February 22nd

As was the case with professor Pande and Dr. Mitteldorf (experts in their field), I would appreciate any detailed questions you have about SENS-E, or the damage vs. programmed theory of aging for this week's program. I have a general grasp of the subject but could always use more interesting questions to ask.
Edited by Mind, 18 February 2009 - 11:10 PM.

Should be good; I look forward to it.

Side note: I am really impressed at the constant stream of top-notch guests that you are able to bring in, Mind. Nice work!

I don't know if you've seen them already, and I haven't read them so I can't say if they're any good, but here's some explanation on the programmed and damage theory of aging, respectively:
http://www.senescenc...programmed.html
http://www.senescence.info/causes.html

Michael R. Rose
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Michael R. Rose is a Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of California, Irvine. His advisor was Brian Charlesworth. His main area of work has been the evolution of aging. In 1991, he published Evolutionary Biology of Aging exploring a view of the subject based on Antagonistic Pleiotropy. This is the hypothesis that aging is caused by genes that have two effects, one acting early in life and the other much later. The genes are adopted by natural selection as a result of their early benefits, and the costs that accrue much later appear as incidental side-effects that we identify as aging. The phenomenon was first described by George C. Williams in 1957, but it was Rose who coined the phrase Antagonistic Pleiotropy.

Rose's laboratory has conducted the longest-running artificial selection experiment designed to test the theory of Antagonistic Pleiotropy. Fruit flies are being bred for longevity by collecting eggs from the longest-lived flies in each generation. The experiment has run since 1981, and has produced flies with quadruple the original life span. The prediction of the Antagonistic Pleiotropy hypothesis was that these long-lived flies would have much lower fertility early in life. The result has been the opposite - that the long-lived flies actually lay more eggs at every stage of life. Rose explains this result in terms of an interaction between genotype and environment. The long-lived flies show other weaknesses that would make them poor competitors in the wild, and perhaps these traits are the true areas of Antagonistic Pleiotropy.

The field of aging biology is divided between those who think that it will be very difficult to develop technology to postpone human aging and those who expect breakthroughs in this field in the near future. Rose is an outspoken advocate for the latter position.

In 1997, Rose was awarded the Busse Research Prize by the World Congress of Gerontology. His most recent book is The Long Tomorrow: How Advances in Evolutionary Biology Can Help Us Postpone Aging

Another discussion about evolutionary aging.

Here is one question submitted so far.

given that the method of generating long lived flies in the lab is by selection for longevity traits, which in effect is a form of directed evolution, have you considered that there is selection in the wild for a particular lifespan that is optimal to the survival of the species and therefore may be interpreted as a negative selector against longer lifespan? If so, could the lifespan be related to the frequency of each generation which in turn is related to the evolutionary rate i.e. a longer generational span would imply, all other things being equal, a decreased rate of evolution and therefore a greater risk of failure to adapt to changing environmental conditions? Extending this notion to other life, would it be reasonable to consider that extended lifespan would be selected against in similar fashion? Further along this line of thinking, would this notion support the existence of an aging program or at least a program that acts to suppress or maintain longevity at a particular range to prevent a slowing in evolution? Can you think of an experiment in flies that could help to test this hypothesis?

Please feel free to submit any questions, and they don't have to be as in depth as the one listed here.

Questions for Dr. Rose:
What is the longest lived fruit fly you have ever bred? ....and how much has that increased since you began your research? (longest lived then compared to longest lived now?)

What are the benefits (in your opinion) of working with flies over working with other animals such as mice? (I am assuming more generations and larger sample sizes, but what other reasons?)

How has your research been adapted for other animal studies? (even humans) ...or, how do you forsee in the future it being adapted for other animals?

Another Dr. Rose interview from a few years ago.

What is the longest lived fruit fly you have ever bred? ....and how much has that increased since you began your research? (longest lived then compared to longest lived now?)

Very good question!!

Other question:
What do you answer to those critics* concerning the approach (in mice in particular)(doing a directed selection towards long-lived animals, then analyzing the change of genes that are responsible for the life extension):
- animal models have early pathologies due to defective alleles; you would detect them instead of anti-aging strategies
- on the other hand wild populations are not practical to use, despite some theoretical advantages, as genes retarding aging would be confounded with those reducing the stress of captivity
- you might simply select animals that voluntarily consume fewer calories
*: Harrison DE, Roderick TH. Selection for maximum longevity in mice. Exp Gerontol. 1997 Jan-Apr;32(1-2):65-78 [pubmed]
Edited by AgeVivo, 22 February 2009 - 07:03 PM.

Another good discussion about Dr. Rose's presentation at SENS3

Show starting in 30 minutes.

I have an interesting snake oil segment as well - getting closer to real anti-aging therapies.

Don't know if it is too late to submit a question on here:

How many generations did it take before the drosophilia demonstrated improved, maximum lifespans (and healthspans)? Could an organism adapt this quickly (by lengthening its lifespan) if aging were not programmed?
Edited by Anthony, 22 February 2009 - 10:34 PM.

Alright, this was a great interview. Im left now wondering what more we can do to directly help the program theory of aging. We need a ball to run with, a foot hold to help hoist it up with. They need more funding, but for what labs specifically? How much do they have now? How can we get more students involved? How much does the governement give to this and what avenues can we take to help get more?

Many of us are ruminating on these ideas, I hope more discussions can get going around the forums, and hopefully we can get people like Rose into a forums that is strictly for high level academic discussion.

Link to the video here.. The interview starts at the 7 minute mark....you might even want to fast forward to the 8 minute mark to get past some of my babbling, trying to get my first question out.

The interview was awesome. Dr. Rose is very competent at explaining the rather complicated theoretical framework surrounding evolved aging. He gave very good analogies about understanding the concepts. I was able to ask several of the questions that were posted. He thought they were very good questions.

Hopefully this interview will provide a necessary paradigm shift.

Damage Repair Interventions (SENS) + Program Aging Interventions (SENSE) is much better than SENS alone.

The interview was excellent; I learned a lot about the different aging viewpoints that Dr. Rose has and how they are different to Aubrey's.

It would be great if we could set up a thread that only he and Aubrey could argue in or something, haha. (entertaining if nothing else)

I just finished watching a recorded version of the interview. It was excellent.

It was a great interview. I especially found Dr. Rose's view of Aubrey's SENS platform interesting. Dr. Rose seemed to regard the seven strands of SENS as just seven out of all the different metabolic/genetic mechanisms/pathways leading to aging, whereas if I understand Aubrey correctly, he promotes his seven SENS strands as the results of all those mechanisms/pathways.

sorry Mind, I missed the live show but I watched the recorded video. I think for the next show you should send emails to your followers one or two hours before.

Alright, this was a great interview. Im left now wondering what more we can do to directly help the program theory of aging.

for starters you can validate the notion from a content perspective by creating a forum subsection dedicated to SENSE as well as SENS so that topics can be better organized, particularly for new visitors (which should also encourage more content). Incidentally, why isnt there a SENS section to begin with? I find this very surprising given the vast majority of imminsters are also MFers. Is this because they are normally directed to MF for SENS discussions?

Incidentally, why isnt there a SENS section to begin with?

Oops, found it.

A veritable treasure of SENS stuff!

Great interview Mind, the creationist debate is quite interesting. The content is excellent and it would be nice if we could do all ours in video, so we can add the best to Blogging Heads?