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Scientists engineer mice genomes to lengthen their lifespans by 30 percent

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Re: Scientists engineer mice genomes to lengthen their lifespans by 30 percent

#91

Post by HaveCourage »

developer2 wrote: post #89
Splines wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Would you enjoy a book or a movie that never ended? Obviously there's a market for such things based on the continued existence of daytime TV soap operas, but nobody seems to think those shows have much cultural value. There are thousands of things I know I have never done, and likely never will. There are millions of things I don't know I have never done. Don't you have even the tiniest bit of regret of where your…

What makes you think that someone who "can't find the time" to do anything interesting in an 80 year lifespan would accomplish anything with another 100+ years? The majority of the population would still be stuck slaving away for minimum wage for their entire life, regardless of the length of that life. If the key to immortality were to be found as part of a universal enlightenment that completely abolishes the conce…

Kids aren't too productive till they age. Perhaps we discover that 40 is the new 18. Or maybe there's more value to life than productivity. There must be polarity for movement. Some must have more than others. Excellence comes only from competition. You're inborn desire to find equality is beaten by natures desire for fitness. You may be less depressed when you see that a game where some win and some lose is better than a game where all lose, or no game at all. You will never be able to complain your way out of the game. If reality starts selecting for equality instead of fitness, we will live in a gray goo of equal. That's no game at all.

Taking a look at all the lives that could be affordably saved saved in Africa right now at low cost. Yet no "pro-life" agenda is currently spiraling out of control biting at that low cost. It is unlikely this more expensive and farther down the road longevity research would cause the hysteria you describe.

Re: Scientists engineer mice genomes to lengthen their lifespans by 30 percent

#92

Post by biuffwbiubi »

What we need right now is more babies and young people and less old people.

Babies make everyone around them happy.

Old people are racist and suffocatingly repetitive. They never have any new ideas and spend all their time in the past. They're the brakes on progress.

Life is all about novelty. Let's have new people in this world.

Re: Scientists engineer mice genomes to lengthen their lifespans by 30 percent

#93

Post by taneq »

daemonk wrote: post #18

tldr for biologists out there. They made a transgenic mouse line of doxycycline inducible Yamanaka factors in progeria (LAKI) background. Too high induction lead to mortality and teratomas, which is known. They cyclicly induced the Yamanaka factors and found it reversed signs of aging (prolong lifespan by ~30%)

Pop-science-journalism headline is predictably overblown... I guess "scientists reduce impact of progeria in mice" doesn't have the same ring to it.

Re: Scientists engineer mice genomes to lengthen their lifespans by 30 percent

#94

Post by lvs »

RushAndAPush wrote: post #87
lvs wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh they did, in fact, but the results in WT mice were not as easy to overhype. The effects were extremely minor to nonexistent in aged wild-type animals (Fig S7 from the paper). Unfortunately, press releases and the subsequent news articles -- as usual -- have totally oversold what this paper means.

So what you're saying is that the mice that didn't have their genome edited didn't have a drastic life extension? I assume the improvements only occurred in the mice that had their genomes edited to reduce Yamanaka factors because they then artificially replaced the Yamanaka factors?

No. That's not quite what I'm saying. There was no particularly interesting effect of inducing transient expression of the Yamanaka factors on normal mice reported in this paper. It is effectively a negative result that's being reported, as it pertains to wild-type mice.

The paper primarily reports results that pertain to mice with a genetic defect that causes progeria. Mice with this defect have a shorter-than-normal lifespan.

Re: Scientists engineer mice genomes to lengthen their lifespans by 30 percent

#95

Post by lvs »

anigbrowl wrote: post #53
daemonk wrote: post #18

tldr for biologists out there. They made a transgenic mouse line of doxycycline inducible Yamanaka factors in progeria (LAKI) background. Too high induction lead to mortality and teratomas, which is known. They cyclicly induced the Yamanaka factors and found it reversed signs of aging (prolong lifespan by ~30%)

Thanks so much. I don't know why news headline writers are so insistent on bullshit, when they could have taken a cue from you and said 'gene therapy increases mouse lifespans by 30%,' which would have been just as short and interesting but vastly more honest.

Not quite. The actual article title is far more correct than either the clickbait headline or your headline:

"In Vivo Amelioration of Age-Associated Hallmarks of Progeria by Partial Reprogramming" (my addition)

Re: Scientists engineer mice genomes to lengthen their lifespans by 30 percent

#96

Post by ClassyJacket »

lisper wrote: post #32
ClassyJacket wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, we could limit reproduction for those that choose not to age, so that you can only reproduce when you're next in line with and someone dies, keeping a consistent population.

> you can only reproduce when you're next in line with and someone dies A system similar to that has historically been employed in lines of royal succession, where the number of thrones available places a hard limit on how many people can be kings. It has generally not ended well.

Well, yes, it does introduce a motivation for murder, I'll give you that.

Re: Scientists engineer mice genomes to lengthen their lifespans by 30 percent

#97

Post by L_Rahman »

jgord wrote: post #50

Its very noisy to read these 'blip' articles, rather like following the stock ticker blow by blow ... Its wonderful that we see these interesting reports every week, but as a non-specialist you never how it will impact human longevity, and when. What I'd like to read is a well considered "state-of-longevity-science" report - by someone not Aubrey DeGray (give the man a medal) but equally cognizant, perhaps more conse…

Would you pay for a publication that maintained something along these lines but for a variety of topics - energy technology, human lifespan, US healthcare systems, etc?

Assume that the pieces are well researched and the journalists have domain expertise, paired with deep reading of primary texts.

Re: Scientists engineer mice genomes to lengthen their lifespans by 30 percent

#98

Post by anigbrowl »

Splines wrote: post #73
anigbrowl wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What fear is motivating me to ask other people to die, as you put it? Eternal life would be sort of cool but I dispute your proposition that more people automatically make more progress faster. More people increases competition which incentivizes some kinds of progress but arguably retards others - consider our lamentable record of environmental destruction. I don't think your aspirations are morally wrong in any way…

> Would you enjoy a book or a movie that never ended? Obviously there's a market for such things based on the continued existence of daytime TV soap operas, but nobody seems to think those shows have much cultural value. There are thousands of things I know I have never done, and likely never will. There are millions of things I don't know I have never done. Don't you have even the tiniest bit of regret of where your…

Oh sure, a little bit. But then I'd be wondering about what if I'd done things the way I actually did them, so maybe I'm regretting that in some other time stream. I try to be stoic about it.

It really comes down to whether you have more of a drive to be happy or to be right. On bad days I often wish I'd opted for the former, but I enjoy cultivating my inner garden and it gives me pleasure to see ideas grow over time.

Re: Scientists engineer mice genomes to lengthen their lifespans by 30 percent

#99

Post by kiba »

naasking wrote: post #81
HaveCourage wrote: post #51

Summary of pro death arguments re: longevity progress Fairness Only rich people will get it. (no tech has ever done this.) Better to give money to the poor than science. (family,city,state,nation, has proven local investment beats foreign.) Bad for society Dead people make more room for new, other people. (consider going first.) Run out of resources (live people discover/extract/renew better than dead or nonexistant)…

> Overpopulation (colonize the seas, solar system, or have a war.) [...] Stop having kids This already happens. The more affluent a country becomes, with its better healthcare, better education, and greater career opportunity, the lower its birthrate. The big crisis in 50 years will be population decline .

Ending aging will reverse this trend. The crisis then won't be population decline but the side effect of population growth.

Re: Scientists engineer mice genomes to lengthen their lifespans by 30 percent

#100

Post by jacalata »

kiba wrote: post #99
naasking wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Overpopulation (colonize the seas, solar system, or have a war.) [...] Stop having kids This already happens. The more affluent a country becomes, with its better healthcare, better education, and greater career opportunity, the lower its birthrate. The big crisis in 50 years will be population decline .

Ending aging will reverse this trend. The crisis then won't be population decline but the side effect of population growth.

Ending aging won't stop accidents, homicide, suicide or (probably) even most modern physical failures like diabetes and heart attacks.
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