23
Jul
2005
FuturePundit On Mitochondrial Research
Permalink | View Comments (0) | Post Comment | Posted by Reason

Randall Parker offers his thoughts on recent research into mitochondria and aging over at FuturePundit. He notes that "Prolla thinks an obvious next step would be to genetically engineer mice to have a lower rate of accumulation of mitochondrial DNA mutation." This is good - showing that increased damage reduces life span is only half the battle. There are plenty of line items that can reduce life span but have no real connection to aging; the conclusive proof would be to demonstrate that lower mutation rates increase life span. Then, "we can begin to think about pharmaceutical interventions to retard aging by preserving mitochondrial function. ... Hopefully Prolla's report will be seen by the scientific community as a reason to do the work necessary to genetically engineer mitochondrial genes to move them into the nucleus."

Link: http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/002910.html

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