Longevity News

A Milestone of the Century

posted on June 08, 2010

While this news did not push war, political and disaster news off the front page, it did get relatively wide attention… but not what it deserves. This feat will certainly change the way we manage our health, and it promises even broader implications.

Most people who embrace science and progress celebrated the news. Some of the others had knee jerk reactions over the implications of “interfering with nature” rather than trying to understand the benefits of what nature teaches us to improve humanity. Sadly, the rest never heard the news.

I have reproduced excerpts of an article from www.edge.org.

ON "CREATION OF A BACTERIAL CELL CONTROLLED BY A CHEMICALLY SYNTHESIZED GENOME" BY VENTER ET AL"

"I feel sure of only one conclusion. The ability to design and create new forms of life marks a turning-point in the history of our species and our planet." — Freeman Dyson

On May 20th, J. Craig Venter and his team at J.C Venter Institute announced the creation of a cell controlled by a synthetic genome in a paper published in SCIENCE.

As science historian George Dyson points out, "from the point of view of technology, a code generated within a digital computer is now self-replicating as the genome of a line of living cells. From the point of view of biology, a code generated by a living organism has been translated into a digital representation for replication, editing and transmission to other cells."

Physicist Freeman Dyson, commenting on the paper, notes that "the sequencing and synthesizing DNA give us all the tools we need to create new forms of life". But it remains to be seen how it will serve in practice.

While it is correct to say that the individual cell was not created, a new line of cells (dare one say species?) was generated. This is new life that is self-propagating, i.e. "the cells with only the synthetic genome are self replicating and capable of logarithmic growth."

The paper concludes with the following:

Lower synthesis costs combined with automation will enable broad applications for synthetic genomics.

Will the new techniques described in the paper allow us to bring extinct species back to life?

Generating a Neanderthal, giving the recent mapping, seems to be feasible, but it will raise ethical hackles. Don't hold your breath waiting for someone to try it Generating a woolly mammoth will not be an ethical problem but it seems also seems feasible by using an elephant's placenta: inject mammoth DNA into modern elephant egg from which elephant DNA has been removed — import the elephant egg into an elephant. A real challenge will be to generate a truly extinct species such a Tasmanian wolf for which no host cells exist.

What does this mean? We don't know yet, and we may not know for years. For now, all we can do is speculate responsibly.

This will open the way to creating useful microbes from scratch to make products like vaccines and biofuels. At a press conference, Dr. Venter described the converted cell as “the first self-replicating species we’ve had on the planet whose parent is a computer.”

Although this is not designing a new life form as some people believe, it is a major step in manipulating existing life forms.

Life goes on ... but it won't be the same.

If you’ve been reading this newsletter regularly, you know how and why biotech is largely becoming an infotech science. Each one of your 24,000 genes is essentially a computer guiding your biochemical processes. As we gain a better understanding of our biology, and while computer power doubles every year (growing exponentially so that an annual doubling rate equals over 1000 times more power in 10 years and well over 1 million times more powerful in 20), we will experience lightening-fast progress in life-extending capabilities.

Hang on for the ride of your…

Long Life,
David Kekich
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THE CARROT OF HAPPINESS from Reason

A few thoughts on some of the underlying motivations for engineering a longer, healthier life:

http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2010/06/the-carrot-of-happiness.php

"The twin incentives for engineering greater human longevity: on the one hand, we have the stick of disease, degeneration, and suffering. On the other hand we have the carrot of a life that in all other aspects generally keeps getting better. Being older brings with it wisdom, knowledge, experience, and perhaps most importantly independence - the ability to be your own person and forge your own path. Youth is wasted on the young, as they say - so why not work at making youth available to everyone? It's the horror of the human condition that just as we get to the point of being practiced and elegant, the rug is pulled out from under us. But engineered healthy longevity is a very possible, plausible goal for this present age of biotechnology. Like all good things it requires work to realize: the longer we hang around not working on it, the longer it'll take to arrive."
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LATEST HEALTHY LIFE EXTENSION HEADLINES

ALLEN HUMAN BRAIN ATLAS LAUNCHED (June 04 2010) http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/vnl.cfm?id=4755
While we're on the subject of the importance of the brain to engineered longevity, here is news of an infrastructural advance from EurekAlert!: "The Allen Institute for Brain Science announced today that it has launched the Allen Human Brain Atlas, a publicly available online atlas charting genes at work throughout the human brain. The data provided in this initial data release represent the most extensive and detailed body of information about gene activity in the human brain to date, documenting which genes are expressed, or 'turned on' where. In the coming years, the Atlas will be expanded with more data and more sophisticated search, analysis and visualization tools to create a comprehensive resource useful to an increasingly wide range of scientists and research programs worldwide. The Allen Human Brain Atlas, available at www.brain-map.org, is a unique multi-modal atlas of the human brain that integrates anatomic and genomic information to create a searchable, three-dimensional map of gene activity in the brain. Data modalities in this resource include magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and histology - providing information about gross neuroanatomy, pathways of neural connections, and microscopic anatomy, respectively - as well as gene expression data derived from multiple approaches."

THE LOGICAL ENDPOINT OF NEUROINFORMATICS (June 04 2010) http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/vnl.cfm?id=4754
Here is a presentation given by researcher Anders Sandberg for Google's Tech Talk series: "The idea of creating a faithful, one-to-one computer copy of a human brain has been a popular philosophical thought experiment and science fiction plot for decades. While computational neuroscience and systems biology are currently very far away from this goal, the trends towards large-scale simulation, industrialized neuroinformatics, new forms of microscopy and powerful computing clusters point in this direction and are enabling new forms of simulations of unprecedented scope. In this talk I will discuss current estimates of how close we are to achieving emulated brains, technological requirements, research challenges and some of the possible consequences." A little while back the Future of Humanity Institute published a roadmap to whole brain emulation. This topic is of interest to supporters of engineered longevity as a part of the very long term goal of incrementally replacing the vulnerable biology of the brain with something more robust and damage-resistant. Such as, for example, clusters of diamondoid nanomachines designed to emulate the functions of neurons.

EAT LESS, LIVE LONGER (June 03 2010) http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/vnl.cfm?id=4753
The New Scientist on calorie restriction: "Dreams of eternal youth feature in many cultures throughout history, but it was only in the 20th century that research into longevity really began. Much about aging is still mysterious - we don't even know the underlying reasons why we journey into old age. There are many lines of enquiry into how to live longer, though, with one of the most intriguing being calorie restriction: in effect, going on a lifelong diet. Calorie restriction dramatically extends not only the lifespan of laboratory animals, but also their 'healthspan' - how long they live free of disease. On the assumption that it has the same effect in people, some individuals have already adopted a restricted diet. The latest evidence suggests that while calorie restriction is indeed beneficial for humans, when it comes to lifespan extension, it may not be the whole story.

The good news is that we might be able to delay aging without cutting our food intake. There's a definite possibility that if you balance the diet correctly, a longer lifespan can be achieved without full food restriction. It is unclear why eating less should make animals live longer. While a restricted diet triggers numerous changes at the molecular and genetic levels, only some of these are common across all the species tested. However, there does seem to be a general principle that a dearth of nutrients causes organisms to divert resources away from growth and reproduction and towards basic survival functions. From an evolutionary perspective, these adaptations could help an organism survive famine."

A REVIEW OF TO AGE OR NOT TO AGE (June 02 2010) http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/vnl.cfm?id=4750
From Geeks of Doom, a review of To Age or Not to Age: "Immortality. We as human beings have desired it for as long as mankind has feared death. Because of the impossibility of everlasting life, we’ve lived vicariously through the fantasy of it in our books and movies and comics and TV shows and anything else that allows us to dream of possessing this amazing fictional power. But what if this once-impossibility was starting to look not only like a possibility, but more like a probability? Do I have your attention? OK, so maybe we're not looking at 'immortality' here, but To Age or Not To Age offers up the idea that we as human beings could live 20% to 40% longer, and that 120-year-old people could be able to look, feel, and move around like a 60-year-old does today. If true, it could be one of the most amazing scientific discoveries ever made. To Age or Not To Age is an incredible documentary to watch, and everyone should really see it themselves, because gods know I surely can't do it justice with a few words here. That, and no matter what you think after seeing the film, many great discussions and debates will come from it. Whether this revolution actually takes place in the next five to ten years or not is yet to be seen, but if you're interested in how we or our future bloodlines may just be living for hundreds of years in the future, this is the very first step."

PSYCHOLOGICAL STRESS, EXERCISE, AND TELOMERE LENGTH (June 01 2010) http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/vnl.cfm?id=4749
Researchers continue to dig into the connection between psychological stress and telomere length: "Exercise can buffer the effects of stress-induced cell aging, according to new research. A growing body of research suggests that short telomeres are linked to a range of health problems, including coronary heart disease and diabetes, as well as early death. Telomere length is increasingly considered a biological marker of the accumulated wear and tear of living, integrating genetic influences, lifestyle behaviors, and stress. Results support [the] discovery six years earlier in premenopausal women that psychological stress has a detrimental effect on immune cell longevity, as it relates to shorter telomeres. The new study showed, however, that when participants were divided into groups - an inactive group, and an active [group] - only the inactive high stress group had shorter telomeres. The active high stress group did not have shorter telomeres. In other words, stress predicted shorter telomeres in the sedentary group, but not in the active group."

THE AGING OF ARTERIES (June 01 2010) http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/vnl.cfm?id=4748
A general interest article on the aging of blood vessels from the Wall Street Journal: "Over time, however, the effects of high blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar and tobacco smoke provide a toxic milieu that injures the endothelium. That causes an inflammatory response intended to heal the artery wall, but that in the face of continuous injury only makes things worse. The progressive result is an accumulation of fatty deposits called plaque that can rupture or have their caps shear off, causing clots that lead to heart attacks. In addition, artery walls can stiffen, transforming compliant arteries into conduits like 'Styrofoam tubes' [that] increase both blood pressure and the workload on the heart. Both high body mass, particularly belly fat that accounts for a person's bulging waist line, and diabetes have a pernicious effect on the health of adult blood vessels. Even if your weight is under control, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, smoking, sedentary living and stress all are culprits that can accelerate vascular age."

RESTRICTING BLOOD FLOW VERSUS SARCOPENIA (May 31 2010) http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/vnl.cfm?id=4747
The results of this study make for an interesting comparison with research that demonstrates lack of blood vessel dilation in muscles to be a root cause of age-related loss of muscle mass, or sarcopenia: researchers "have determined that moderately and temporarily restricting the flow of blood through muscles - a practice adopted by bodybuilders who noticed that it made light weights feel heavier - can be combined with low-level resistance exercise training to produce muscle-mass increases in older men. Investigators studied changes in the thigh muscles of seven older men (average age 70) when they performed four minutes of low-resistance leg extension exercises both with and without inflatable cuffs that reduced blood flow out of the muscles. Muscle protein synthesis was measured in each of the men by monitoring changes in a chemical tracer infused into the bloodstream. In addition, a series of biopsies yielded muscle samples that were analyzed to track alterations in biochemical pathways critical to muscle growth. We saw that when we put the cuffs on, they responded similarly to young people doing traditional high-intensity resistance exercise."

AN INTERVIEW WITH MICHAEL WEST (May 31 2010) http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/vnl.cfm?id=4746

From Life Extension Magazine: "the name 'regenerative medicine' came from Bill Haseltine, then of Human Genome Sciences, one of the early leaders in genomics and DNA technology. Back in the 1990s, Bill learned that researchers in aging were making important progress on turning back the clock of aging in human cells through cloning, and then creating young cells that could potentially regenerate or repair all the tissues of the aged human body. And so, upon hearing of that realistic prospect, he christened the field 'regenerative medicine' in the belief that it would one day become a major part of medical practice. So, based on its origins, I would define regenerative medicine as that collection of technologies that utilizes embryonic pluripotent stem cells and their derivatives to regenerate tissues in the body ravaged from disease, primarily degenerative disorders associated with aging. The problem with human biology is that the immortal reproductive cells that built you and me develop into differentiated cells within our bodies and as a result, lose the capacity to proliferate (divide) forever. So, the cells of the body are mortal, meaning they have a finite life span, and as our tissues age, or deteriorate from disease, our body has a finite capacity to regenerate and repair those tissues. As a result, we suffer progressive declines in function that lead to our death." There is more to aging than this, however.

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