4 ms·

What's the current status of longevity research? Do we know what causes aging and what allows some animals to love much longer than orders?

rybosworld 4y ago
I think the simplest answer is that aging is an accumulation of dna errors and your body reaches a point where it doesn't know what the "correct" dna was. Some species have adapted better error correction.
- fbn79 4y ago
  So if we backup our DNA at 20, we can use CRISPR at 50 to restore it and return young?
  - thrwwy5685865 4y ago
    This is very hard to do. How do you get CRISPR to every cell in the body without incidentally killing you?
    - p1esk 4y ago
      Ironic that you're worried about doing something that can "incidentally" kill you - to prevent something that will definitely kill you.
      - mr_toad 4y ago
        Depends on how old you are. If you’re 50 and contemplating a procedure that could make you 20 but might kill you, you’d probably defer. Maybe when you’re 70 or 90 you might see things differently.
        p1esk 4y ago
        If I'm 50 I would probably wait 10-20 years until the procedure becomes more reliable, but if I'm 70 I'd probably go for it even with 50/50 chance.
  - derbOac 4y ago
    I think this is what will eventually be done, FWIW. The technology is now too difficult but eventually will be a solvable problem.
    - paulryanrogers 4y ago
      I doubt it's inevitable. Resource limits and the unpredictability of innovation make it too uncertain.
- hobofan 4y ago
  This is only a small part of it. Organisms are not just a clean slate representation of their DNA. The accumulated state of "errors" on other levels (e.g. misfolded proteins and heavy metals which the organism doesn't have any mechanisms to discard) also play a major role.
  - rybosworld 4y ago
    That's ultimately related to DNA errors as well. You can read more about it by searching for "DNA damage theory of aging". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_damage_theory_of_aging https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_damage_theory_of_aging As far as I know, this is the most widely accepted theory for aging. The body will repair if it can. Even things like re-growing limbs are theoretically possible but are prevented by tissue damage such that the body doesn't "remember" what used to be there. Aka scar tissue. https://www.livescience.com/59194-could-humans-ever-regenerate-limbs.html https://www.livescience.com/59194-could-humans-ever-regenera...
    - hobofan 4y ago
      > That's ultimately related to DNA errors as well. No it is not. Sure, you could try to frame everything as DNA errors, but at some point that just becomes so convoluted and out of touch with what's actually happening that it fails to be a useful model. Wikipedia article you link also doesn't state that DNA errors are the _only_ cause of aging. Overall I would say that the article mostly represents the view from 15-20 years ago. That's ages in biochemical research times. I would in part ascribe that view to the fact that DNA sequencing was a hot research topic back then and for the first time became accessible to a wide audience of researchers. That hype cooled off a bit once it was recognized that mostly static snaphots of DNA only offer a limited picture of what happens in organisms, and research focus shifted more towards all the more dynamic processes in organisms (some of which are quite far removed from DNA interactions). > As far as I know, this is the most widely accepted theory for aging. As mentioned in a sibling comment, the "current" most widely accepted framework is the "hallmarks of aging"[0], where DNA errors and epigentic alterations (points accounted for in the DNA damage theory), cover only 2 out of 9 hallmarks. That paper is cited in basically every introduction of a paper that is tangentially related to longevity research and their mechanisms nowadays. The same authors also recently published an updated list of hallmarks[1], adding 3 new ones (also all non-DNA error related). [0]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3836174 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3836174 [1]: https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(22)01377-0 https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(22)01377-0
dontwearitout 4y ago
I've been very interested in David Sinclair's work at Harvard on the Information Theory of Aging: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLZEEOZlTzo&t=357s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLZEEOZlTzo&t=357s
hobofan 4y ago
On a coarse-grained level the 9 main different mechanisms that make up "aging" have been known for at least a decade now[0]. Each of those areas has different and often vast variations of sub-mechanisms that need to be tackled and worked around, to ultimately "reverse"/stop aging. Some are being more concretely researched than others (. The impact of tackling some of those areas are also smaller than some of the others, and to my knowledge there is no clear picture yet which of those are "low hanging fruits" (or if there are any), where solving e.g. 3 of them will increase average lifespan by 20 years. It could also be the case that it's mostly a long tail were each if them makes up for minor lifespan increases. [0]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3836174/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3836174/

rybosworld 4y ago

I think the simplest answer is that aging is an accumulation of dna errors and your body reaches a point where it doesn't know what the "correct" dna was. Some species have adapted better error correction.

fbn79 4y ago
So if we backup our DNA at 20, we can use CRISPR at 50 to restore it and return young?
- thrwwy5685865 4y ago
  This is very hard to do. How do you get CRISPR to every cell in the body without incidentally killing you?
  - p1esk 4y ago
    Ironic that you're worried about doing something that can "incidentally" kill you - to prevent something that will definitely kill you.
    - mr_toad 4y ago
      Depends on how old you are. If you’re 50 and contemplating a procedure that could make you 20 but might kill you, you’d probably defer. Maybe when you’re 70 or 90 you might see things differently.
      - p1esk 4y ago
        If I'm 50 I would probably wait 10-20 years until the procedure becomes more reliable, but if I'm 70 I'd probably go for it even with 50/50 chance.
- derbOac 4y ago
  I think this is what will eventually be done, FWIW. The technology is now too difficult but eventually will be a solvable problem.
  - paulryanrogers 4y ago
    I doubt it's inevitable. Resource limits and the unpredictability of innovation make it too uncertain.
hobofan 4y ago
This is only a small part of it. Organisms are not just a clean slate representation of their DNA. The accumulated state of "errors" on other levels (e.g. misfolded proteins and heavy metals which the organism doesn't have any mechanisms to discard) also play a major role.
- rybosworld 4y ago
  That's ultimately related to DNA errors as well. You can read more about it by searching for "DNA damage theory of aging". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_damage_theory_of_aging https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_damage_theory_of_aging As far as I know, this is the most widely accepted theory for aging. The body will repair if it can. Even things like re-growing limbs are theoretically possible but are prevented by tissue damage such that the body doesn't "remember" what used to be there. Aka scar tissue. https://www.livescience.com/59194-could-humans-ever-regenerate-limbs.html https://www.livescience.com/59194-could-humans-ever-regenera...
  - hobofan 4y ago
    > That's ultimately related to DNA errors as well. No it is not. Sure, you could try to frame everything as DNA errors, but at some point that just becomes so convoluted and out of touch with what's actually happening that it fails to be a useful model. Wikipedia article you link also doesn't state that DNA errors are the _only_ cause of aging. Overall I would say that the article mostly represents the view from 15-20 years ago. That's ages in biochemical research times. I would in part ascribe that view to the fact that DNA sequencing was a hot research topic back then and for the first time became accessible to a wide audience of researchers. That hype cooled off a bit once it was recognized that mostly static snaphots of DNA only offer a limited picture of what happens in organisms, and research focus shifted more towards all the more dynamic processes in organisms (some of which are quite far removed from DNA interactions). > As far as I know, this is the most widely accepted theory for aging. As mentioned in a sibling comment, the "current" most widely accepted framework is the "hallmarks of aging"[0], where DNA errors and epigentic alterations (points accounted for in the DNA damage theory), cover only 2 out of 9 hallmarks. That paper is cited in basically every introduction of a paper that is tangentially related to longevity research and their mechanisms nowadays. The same authors also recently published an updated list of hallmarks[1], adding 3 new ones (also all non-DNA error related). [0]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3836174 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3836174 [1]: https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(22)01377-0 https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(22)01377-0

dontwearitout 4y ago

I've been very interested in David Sinclair's work at Harvard on the Information Theory of Aging: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLZEEOZlTzo&t=357s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLZEEOZlTzo&t=357s

hobofan 4y ago

On a coarse-grained level the 9 main different mechanisms that make up "aging" have been known for at least a decade now[0]. Each of those areas has different and often vast variations of sub-mechanisms that need to be tackled and worked around, to ultimately "reverse"/stop aging. Some are being more concretely researched than others (. The impact of tackling some of those areas are also smaller than some of the others, and to my knowledge there is no clear picture yet which of those are "low hanging fruits" (or if there are any), where solving e.g. 3 of them will increase average lifespan by 20 years. It could also be the case that it's mostly a long tail were each if them makes up for minor lifespan increases. [0]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3836174/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3836174/