Posts tagged "longevity"
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"We have the means right now to live long enough to live forever. Existing knowledge can be aggressively applied to dramatically slow down aging processes so we can still be in vital health when the more radical life extending therapies from biotechnology and nanotechnology become available. But most baby boomers won’t make it because they are unaware of the accelerating aging process in their bodies and the opportunity to intervene."Ray Kurzweil
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Dopamine-receptor gene variant linked to human longevity →
A variant of a gene associated with active personality traits in humans seems to also be involved with living a longer life, UC Irvine and other researchers have found. This derivative of a dopamine-receptor gene – called the DRD4 7R allele – appears in significantly higher rates in people more than 90 years old and is linked to lifespan increases in mouse studies.
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Can a Jellyfish Unlock the Secret of Immortality? →
After more than 4,000 years — almost since the dawn of recorded time, when Utnapishtim told Gilgamesh that the secret to immortality lay in a coral found on the ocean floor — man finally discovered eternal life in 1988. He found it, in fact, on the ocean floor. The discovery was made unwittingly by Christian Sommer, a German marine-biology student in his early 20s. He was spending the summer in Rapallo, a small city on the Italian Riviera, where exactly one century earlier Friedrich Nietzsche conceived “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”: “Everything goes, everything comes back; eternally rolls the wheel of being. Everything dies, everything blossoms again… .”
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Smart scaffolding aims to rebuild tissue from the inside →
Smart scaffolding that can guide cells, proteins and small-molecule drugs to make new tissue and repair damage inside the body is in the works at Rice University.
Scientists at Rice and the Texas A&M Health Science Center Baylor College of Dentistry received a $1.7 million, five-year grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to develop a hydrogel that can be injected into a patient to form an active biological scaffold.
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Longevity gene that makes Hydra immortal also controls human aging →
Why is the polyp Hydra immortal? Researchers from Kiel University decided to study it — and unexpectedly discovered a link to aging in humans.
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Stem cell bodyguards: Rare immune cells keep blood stem cells youthful →
Hiding deep inside the bone marrow are special cells. They wait patiently for the hour of need, at which point these blood-forming stem cells can proliferate and differentiate into billions of mature blood immune cells to help the body cope with infection, for example, or extra red blood cells for low oxygen levels at high altitudes. Even in emergencies, however, the body keeps to a long-term plan: It maintains a reserve of undifferentiated stem cells for future needs and crises. A research team headed by Prof. Tsvee Lapidot of the Institute’s immunology Department recently discovered a new type of bodyguard that protects stem cells from over-differentiation. In a paper that appeared in Nature Immunology, they revealed how this rare, previously unknown sub-group of activated immune cells keeps the stem cells in the bone marrow “forever young.”
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Nanoparticles against aging →
A team of Spanish scientists has developed an intelligent nanodevice that lays the foundations for the future development of new therapies against aging. The device consists of nanoparticles that can selectively release drugs in aged human cells. Its potential future use ranges from the treatment of diseases involving tissue or cellular degeneration such as cancer, Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s, among others, to accelerated aging disorders (progeria).
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Scientists make old muscles young again in attempt to combat aging →
An international team of scientists have identified for the first time a key factor responsible for declining muscle repair during ageing, and discovered how to halt the process in mice with a common drug. Although an early study, the findings provide clues as to how muscles lose mass with age, which can result in weakness that affects mobility and may cause falls.
The study, to be published in the journal Nature, involved researchers from King’s College London, Harvard University and Massachusetts General Hospital.
The study looked at stem cells found inside muscle – which are responsible for repairing injury – to find out why the ability of muscles to regenerate declines with age. A dormant reservoir of stem cells is present inside every muscle, ready to be activated by exercise and injury to repair any damage. When needed, these cells divide into hundreds of new muscle fibres that repair the muscle. At the end of the repairing process some of these cells also replenish the pool of dormant stem cells so that the muscle retains the ability to repair itself again and again.
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Fish oils 'help slow age decline' →
Moderate exercise, and a regular intake of oily fish fatty acids, keeps elderly immobility at bay, a study suggests.
Findings of a recent trial show that women aged over 65 who received omega-3 fatty acids gained almost twice as much muscle strength following exercise than those taking olive oil.
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Protecting prion protein keeps stem cells young →
Could we stem the tide of ageing by delaying the deterioration of stem cells? A new compound that appears to do just that could help us find ways to protect our organs from age-related wear and tear, experiments in mice suggest.
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Ray Kurzweil on Immortality from appearance on PBS NewsHour
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Secret of ageing found: Japanese scientists pave way to everlasting life →
Japan, which already tops the world’s life expectancy list, now has another tool to cement its leading position. The country’s scientists say they have discovered a protein responsible for ageing and learnt to control it.
A group of scientists from Osaka University have found that one of the components of the human complement system is directly responsible for ageing, Russia’s ITAR-TASS quotes Japanese media on Saturday. The C1q protein, the researchers say, is to blame for human cells getting old.
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The Three Types of Research into Aging and Longevity →
I view the world of aging and longevity science as divided into three broad classes of research and researchers - something that will already be apparent to regular readers, but which I don’t recall having outlined explicitly. This crude model of the research community informs the ways in which I read research and evaluate the state of progress towards meaningful goals: both extension of healthy human life, and - more importantly - forms of medicine capable of repair and reversal of aging.
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Making human textiles: Research team ups the ante with development of blood vessels woven from donor cells →
A lot of people were skeptical when two young California-based researchers set out more than a decade ago to create a completely human-derived alternative to the synthetic blood vessels commonly used in dialysis patients. Since then, they’ve done that and more.
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Curiosity : Can You Live Forever?
