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FarCenter

(19,429 posts) Fri Dec 20, 2013, 04:40 PM Dec 2013

Scientists Have Made Old Mice Young Again

The fountain of youth may have been discovered after scientists found they could reverse the aging process in mammals.

Harvard researchers managed to turn the clock back for mice by helping their cellular DNA communicate more efficiently.

After just one week of restoring this communication scientists found two-year-old mice now had the body tissue of a six-month-old.

"In human years, this would be like a 60-year-old converting to a 20-year-old in these specific areas," said Professor David Sinclair, an expert in genetics at Harvard Medical School.

11 replies

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Scientists Have Made Old Mice Young Again (Original Post) FarCenter Dec 2013 OP

Like the med pods in Elysium bluestateguy Dec 2013 #1

They'll need to replicate this to get convermination pinboy3niner Dec 2013 #2

They should really ratchet up the testing schedule Aerows Dec 2013 #10

And again.. X_Digger Dec 2013 #3

I'd love to have this work on cats and dogs. Xyzse Dec 2013 #4

Ooo! sibelian Dec 2013 #5

That's all we need, never dying mice. longship Dec 2013 #6

Sounds like the makin's of a good sci-fi Hassin Bin Sober Dec 2013 #11

We better get it together in regards to social security and healthcare. Archaic Dec 2013 #7

It may turn out that a relatively inexpensive compound will do the trick. FarCenter Dec 2013 #9

By the time they get this thing perfected... Shandris Dec 2013 #8

bluestateguy

(44,173 posts)

1. Like the med pods in Elysium

Reply to FarCenter (Original post)

Fri Dec 20, 2013, 04:47 PM

Dec 2013

Given 20 years that technology could be available to humans. We just have to make sure that the wealthy do not conspire to keep it for themselves.

pinboy3niner

(53,339 posts)

2. They'll need to replicate this to get convermination

Reply to FarCenter (Original post)

Fri Dec 20, 2013, 04:49 PM

Dec 2013

Aerows

(39,961 posts)

10. They should really ratchet up the testing schedule

Reply to pinboy3niner (Reply #2)

Sat Dec 21, 2013, 11:49 AM

Dec 2013

X_Digger

(18,585 posts)

3. And again..

Reply to FarCenter (Original post)

Fri Dec 20, 2013, 04:51 PM

Dec 2013

http://anaximperator.wordpress.com/2012/03/30/if-it-works-in-a-mouse-it-works-in-a-man-right-well-not-necessarily/

You'd be surprised how many things we've found in mice (cures for cancer, etc) that don't actually translate to humans..

Xyzse

(8,217 posts)

4. I'd love to have this work on cats and dogs.

Reply to FarCenter (Original post)

Fri Dec 20, 2013, 05:05 PM

Dec 2013

To have them running again, after months and years of decline.

sibelian

(7,804 posts)

5. Ooo!

Reply to FarCenter (Original post)

Fri Dec 20, 2013, 05:07 PM

Dec 2013

Me next, please. My eyesight's fading...

longship

(40,416 posts)

6. That's all we need, never dying mice.

Reply to FarCenter (Original post)

Fri Dec 20, 2013, 06:47 PM

Dec 2013

It's winter here again in the Manistee National Forest. It's time to set the mouse traps in the kitchen again. I don't know how they get in, but they are very good at it. I once thought that the blue racer in the crawl space would cut them down, but snakes are just too passive -- they get a good meal and sleep for weeks. Meanwhile the mice breed like... Fucking Mice! And in the winter that means they somehow get into my warm cellar and crawl space and migrate up to my kitchen.

Eternal mouse, meet mouse trap.

SNAP! You're still dead. How's the never aging working out for ya?

Note: this is a satire. Mouse research is awesome. If you want to read about some very cool cutting edge science, try Knockout Mouse, which leverages genetics, mice, and medicine in an absolutely awesome way. But, as another responder pointed out, mouse research rarely translates to humans. It's primary research, but medical applications on mice are mere analogues of human health problems. Ya know. They're mice, not humans.

Hassin Bin Sober

(26,335 posts)

11. Sounds like the makin's of a good sci-fi

Reply to longship (Reply #6)

Sat Dec 21, 2013, 11:56 AM

Dec 2013

Or a bad sci-fi directed by C. Thomas Howell.

Archaic

(273 posts)

7. We better get it together in regards to social security and healthcare.

Reply to FarCenter (Original post)

Sat Dec 21, 2013, 02:49 AM

Dec 2013

We're going to keep seeing advances like this. Eventually, it's going to work on humans. Very rich ones. Some of it might trickle down to normal folks.

What do you do when you're healthy and can work into your 90's? What do the 20 year olds do? Or the 30s/40s/50s/60s...

Between population, energy consumption, food production and the environment, we better get some ideas on paper for when this sort of thing gets real. If 20% of the mortality rate falls off from age related issues. And as the work is done to prevent infant mortalities around the world, we'll really see a population boom.

FarCenter

(19,429 posts)

9. It may turn out that a relatively inexpensive compound will do the trick.

Reply to Archaic (Reply #7)

Sat Dec 21, 2013, 10:12 AM

Dec 2013

1. Modulation by Increasing NAD+ Synthesis.

The most obvious strategy for testing how enhancing NAD+ levels affects sirtuin activity consists in boosting NAD+ synthesis by supplementation with NAD+ precursors. Different precursors can be used to promote NAD+ synthesis. The primary de novo synthesis of NAD+ generally initiates from tryptophan (Houtkooper et al., 2010). Nicotinic acid (NA) is another NAD+ precursor that is transformed into NAD+ through the Preiss-Handler pathway, therefore converging with the same NAD+ synthesis pathway used by tryptophan. It is assumed, however, that perhaps the principle source of NAD+ comes from salvage pathways from other adenine nucleotide metabolites (Houtkooper et al., 2010). The main NAD+ precursors that funnel through the salvage pathways are NAM and the more recently described nicotinamide riboside (NR). NAM generates NAD+ through an independent pathway, in which the rate-limiting enzyme Nampt transforms NAM into NMN, which on its turn is converted into NAD+ by NMN adenylyltransferase (Revollo et al., 2004). NR is phosphorylated upon its entry in the cell by the NR kinases, generating NMN, which is then converted to NAD+ by NMN adenylyltransferase (Bieganowski and Brenner, 2004).

http://intl.pharmrev.org/content/64/1/166.full#title14

Shandris

(3,447 posts)

8. By the time they get this thing perfected...

Reply to FarCenter (Original post)

Sat Dec 21, 2013, 04:19 AM

Dec 2013

...I'll BE 60, so they need to get the ball rolling.

Now I just need to figure out how to get rich between now and then. I don't suppose any of our resident lurking Republican trolls would like to adopt one nice, sweet Shandris to the tune of, oh, say, 5 mill or so?

...can't hurt to check!

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