DailyDirt: Mysteries Of Aging

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The fountain of youth has been an elusive goal for centuries, and there's still no magic potion (or pharmaceutical) that can stop the aging process. But bits of progress suggest that there might be ways to extend a healthy human lifespan by a significant amount. Here are just a few more data points that could point to a future of living longer and longer.

• Brooke Greenberg is twenty years old, but she has an extremely rare disorder (she's the only person known to have Syndrome X) that hinders her growth so that she appears to be about five years old. Researchers are looking at this girl's DNA to try to figure out if there is a genetic cause and which genes may be behind this unusual aging process. [url]
• The German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg is looking at a glycoprotein called Dickkopf-1 (aka Dkk1) which seems to be involved in the cognitive abilities of elderly brains. The function of this molecule isn't entirely clear, but some researchers are trying to understand it in an effort to determine the mechanisms of declining cognitive abilities as people age. [url]
• The effects of consuming resveratrol aren't fully understood yet, but when honeybees eat this compound, they eat less and live longer. So there's a possibility that resveratrol plays a role in caloric restriction when it's associated with extending lifespans of various animals. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

Filed Under: aging, biology, brooke greenberg, caloric restriction, dkk1, dna, genetic disorder, lifespan, resveratrol, syndrome x