TAPPING THE POWER of longevity genes could change the arc of a typical human lifetime: instead of vitality and growth giving way to the decline of old age, a person might be able to retain the youthfulness he feels at 50 when he is 70, 90 or well past 100.
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Overview
Lifting Limits on Life Span
You can assume quite a bit about the state of a used car just from its mileage and model year. The wear and tear of heavy driving and the passage of time will have taken an inevitable toll. The same appears to be true of aging in people, but the analogy is flawed because of a crucial difference between inanimate machines and living creatures: deterioration is not inexorable in biological systems, which can respond to their environments and use their own energy to defend and repair themselves.
At one time, scientists believed aging to be not just deterioration but an active continuation of an organism's genetically programmed development. Once an individual achieved maturity, "aging genes" began to direct its progress toward the grave. This idea has been discredited, and conventional wisdom now holds that aging really is just wearing out over time because the body's normal maintenance and repair mechanisms simply wane. Evolutionary natural selection, the logic goes, has no reason to keep them working once an organism has passed its reproductive age.
This article was originally published with the title Unlocking the Secrets of Longevity Genes.
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