Extending life

1996/09/01 Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Genetika

In the laboratory they have managed to make a worm live six times more than normal while researching the influence of genes on aging. Caenorhabditis elegans is the name of the worm that lives an average of ten days.

However, after genetic mutations carried out by researchers at MacGill University in Montreal in Canada, his life is two months. Mutations allow a longer larval period and a slower metabolism. This causes the worm to have a longer and slower life.

The aging process of living beings is, at all, a step to understand, although at the moment the trial is only a kind of hibernation.