Keeping Track of Laser Ablation Research
You'll recall that a few months ago the Immortality Institute community raised the funds needed for a proof of concept laser ablation of lipofuscin. The biochemicals making up lipofuscin build up in long-lived cell populations with age, degrading their ability to function. This is one of the root causes of age-related degeneration. The funded study aims to show that pulsed laser light can break down these unwanted chemical byproducts without damaging the cells that contain them. The end result of this research will hopefully be a demonstration that nematode worms treated in this way live longer, thanks to the removal of lipofuscin. The researcher, Nason Schooler, is blogging his progress, and updates also appear on the Immortality Institute page for the research project: "My leveling feet for the breadboards finally came in yesterday. I was waiting on them before doing my real optics setup, because I had to tear down all the optics in order to install them. Now the boards with feet are all set up and leveled, and I have the laser installed in a vise - which is a huge stability improvement over the wooden platform I had before. I'll try to get some pix up this weekend. As soon as the optics are setup, experiments will begin. I've got fresh batches of worms all ready to go."
Link: http://imminst.org/archive/articles/laser-ablation-update