A lifetime
A nice interview in the
NY Times with Dr. Michael R. Rose:
Live Longer With Evolution? Evidence May Lie in Fruit Flies
In the 1970's, Michael R. Rose made scientific history with experiments manipulating the life spans of fruit flies.
Through selective breeding, Dr. Rose was able to create a long-lived line of creatures he called Methuselah flies. He then put his research into reverse and developed flies with much shortened life spans.
All this was accomplished within 12 generations by accelerating the evolutionary processes in a laboratory setting.
A few of the questions:
Q. Why do scientists need to embrace evolution to do longevity research?
A. Because the common assumption is that young bodies work and then they fall apart during aging. Young bodies only work because natural selection makes them healthy enough to survive and breed.
As adults get older, natural selection stops caring about them, so we lose its benefits and our health. If you don't understand this, aging research is an unending riddle that goes around in circles.
Q. You are known in the genetics world for manipulating the life span of fruit flies. Can you describe your very famous experiment?
A. My experiment was to let my flies reproduce only at late ages. This forced natural selection to pay attention to the survival and reproductive vigor of the flies through their middle age.
The flies evolved longer life spans and greater reproduction over the next dozen generations. This showed that natural section was really the ultimate controller of aging, not some piece of biochemistry.
Q. Why was it important to manipulate the life spans of fruit flies?
A. Because it showed that aging isn't some general breakdown process, like the way cars rust. Aging is an optional feature of life. And it can be slowed or postponed.
And:
Q. Do you believe there is such a thing as a limited life span for humans?
A. No. Life span is totally tunable. In my lab, we tune it up and down all the time.
Fascinating stuff... Different people age at different rates. This area of research should bear some fantastic fruit in ten or twenty years...
Posted by DaveH at December 7, 2005 4:58 PM