Of interest today, a paper from Barzilai et al at the open access journal PLoS Genetics: "Human geneticists have only recently begun to use the tools of linkage analysis and association studies to identify alleles contributing to exceptionally long life spans. Interesting candidates have emerged from these studies. There is virtually no information, however, on the genetic basis of differential rates of decline in well-defined physiological functions among human populations. We shall argue that such studies, particularly those that are initiated in middle age, before the onset of complicating comorbidities, should have a high priority for research, as they would have the potential to discover genes that impact on rates of aging within various organ systems. ... Parents of centenarians (born in 1870) were shown to have approximately nine times the odds of living to the tenth decade as compared to controls. Siblings of centenarians were shown to have up to an 18-fold increase in the chance of achieving a similar age. Such data have raised the possibility that some specific genetic modulators of aging in humans can be identified using such populations, and that conserved pathways for exceptional longevity might thus be validated."

Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgen.0030125