Immortality? One step closer?
How often have you seen in the papers stories about a wonderfully healthy 105 year old who attributed their health and longevity to a lifetime 40-a-day habit and the odd glass or five of whisky each night?
Researchers at the Einstein Longevity Genes Project are one step closer to understanding why some people live to 100 while most people don’t. It is known that these centagenerians often carry many faulty genetic variants, so in theory they must have other genes which protect them from these disease genes.
The Einstein researchers looked at a cohort of long-living related Ashkenazy Jews (descended from a founder population of just 30,000 people in Eastern Europe) and compared them to a control group of unrelated Ashkenazy Jews. They were able to construct a network of gene interactions that contributes to the understanding of longevity. In particular, they found that the favorable variant of the gene CETP acts to buffer the harmful effects of the disease-causing gene Lp(a).
If future research finds that a single longevity gene buffers against several disease-causing genes, then drugs that mimic the action of the longevity gene could help protect against cardiovascular disease and other age-related diseases.
Penny
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POSTED IN: Genealogy and DNA, General Genetics and Health, Genetic Future, Genetic Ingenuity, Genetic Testing
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