In the early '90s, we discovered mutations that could double the normal life span of worms.
— Cynthia Kenyon
Carbohydrates, and especially refined ones like sugar, make you produce lots of extra insulin. I've been keeping my intake really low ever since I discovered this. I've cut out all starch such as potatoes, noodles, rice, bread and pasta.
There are lots of different strategies that an animal can use to survive. What a worm does is try to convert food into worms as soon as possible. In three days a single worm produces 300 progeny. So why put your resources into developing if you can make a brand-new worm in no time at all?
In principle, if you understood the mechanisms of keeping things repaired, you could keep things going indefinitely.
It is unlikely that changes in telomeres are influencing the lifespan of the worm. That is because telomeres only shorten when cells divide. Most of the cells of the worm stop dividing when the worm becomes an adult.
Sugar is the new tobacco.
I loved the idea that biology was logical.
Imagine that: If you could change one of the genes in an experiment, an aging gene, maybe you could slow down aging and extend lifespan.
Perhaps genes did regulate the aging process. Perhaps different organisms had different life spans because a universal regulatory 'clock' was set to run at different speeds in different species.
I was a little truth seeker as a child. I wanted more than anything to understand myself and also other people.
You would think that UV just causes mutations, but it doesn't; you need a gene to be active for it.
Age is the single largest risk factor for an enormous number of diseases. So if you can essentially postpone aging, then you can have beneficial effects on a whole wide range of disease.
You could have two completely different careers if you could stay healthy to 90. How fascinating that would be.
Age is the biggest risk factor for many diseases. You're 100 times more likely to get a tumor at age 65 than age 35. It makes a huge difference. It gives a whole new meaning to preventive medicine.
With worms you can just change genes at random and see if you can find a mutant that does what you want it to do.
If I were a worm, I would rather be the long-lived mutant than the normal worm, that's for sure.
Just living longer and being sick is the worst. But the idea that you could have fewer diseases, and just have a healthy life and then turn out the lights, that's a good vision to have. And I think what we know about some of these pathways suggests that might be possible.
Humans live a lot longer than dogs, and we don't suffer any penalty that I can see. We're superior in almost every way - they can smell better. But really, they can't drive cars, they can't do half the things we can. I don't understand why you can't live longer and be really fit.
I was one of those kids who was always seeking the truth, and I first looked for truth by reading novels. It took quite a long time for me to realize there are better ways.
The hope is that if we can increase youthfulness, we can postpone age-related diseases.
Maybe one day we will be able to take a pill that keeps us young and healthy much longer. I believe in my heart that this will happen.
Ageing is very exciting. But if I didn't work on ageing, I'd want to work on the brain. There are really cool techniques you can use now. And bioinformatics. The methods you can use for comparing large data sets - that's so powerful.
It was like stepping on to an escalator; I could do anything. I was just made for science.
One thing that's likely: How you look as you age is hereditary. Some of my family members, for example, look younger than their real age. And people have mistaken me for 30, even 25.
I eat some fruit every day, but not too much and almost no processed food. I stay away from sweets, except 80 per cent chocolate.
Generally, older people in their fifties, sixties, and seventies are running most countries and are CEOs of corporations. Which isn't to say there aren't entrepreneurs, but if the young were better in every respect, there'd be no reason for the old. Our life span reflects our particular life strategy.
The public is absolutely fascinated by aging. They don't want to get old. And you can see - read Shakespeare. Read the sonnets. They're all about aging.
If the aging process is controlled in a similar way in worms and humans, then we can use what we learn about worms to speed our study of higher organisms.
We are trying to find drugs, small molecules, that people could take to make them disease-resistant, more youthful and healthy. Eventually we will find them.
A big tree seemed even more beautiful to me when I imagined thousands of tiny photosynthesis machines inside every leaf. So I went to MIT and worked on bacteria because that's where people knew the most about these switches, how to control the genetics.
It's like, say, if you were a dog. You notice that you're getting old, and you look at your human and you think, 'Why isn't this human getting old?'... But now we're the human looking out and imagining a different human.
With science it's very important not to go down the wrong path, but the wrong path in science is a path you go down where everything you learn is already known. So you need to steer around the obvious.
I have always gotten a thrill, a kick, from learning new things.
The idea that ageing was subject to control was completely unexpected.
It's possible that we could change a human gene and double our life span. I don't know if that's true, but we can't rule that out.
Life's too short to not be around nice people.
