I just saw this article that seems an interesting summary about the discipline of "contrasting ageing". I will provide here a punctual short summary: -- Danie

I just saw this article that seems an interesting summary about the discipline of "contrasting ageing". I will provide here a punctual short summary: -- Daniel Martinez (Uni-Pomona) in 1998 discovered the hydra, the animal that does not grow older; its body is entirely made of "mother cells" ("stem cells"), which regenerate continuously. This implies avoiding differentiation into organs; -- Shinya Yamanaka in 2006 demonstrated that adult cells can be brought back to embryonic stage [...] Yamanaka, Nobel prize winner for Medicine in 2012, pioneered "cell reprogramming": results on mice are being very promising; -- Longevity has progressed from ~50 years of age before the '60s to a frequent territorial average of over 80; the theoretical limit was set to ~120 a few decades ago; the highest known record is that of Jeanne Calment, 122 years and 5 months; -- María Blasco proposed in 2013 nine molecular signatures of age-related cellular decay, including genomic instability; loss of proteostasis (retention of defective proteins); shortening of telomeres (artificial lengthening of telomeres in mice lengthened their lives); failures in the systems in charge of the identification of nutrients; epigenetic alterations; cellular senescence - in terms of the state in which an irreparably damaged cell stops reproducing and becomes a liability in its tissue. -- Current solutions tackle the above factors: there exist drugs that attack senescent cells and telomerase activators. They flank attempts that tackle the consequences of aging (e.g. through known drugs like metmorphine).