Have you ever wondered what kind of extraordinary people they are who can run a marathon at 65 or practice ballet at 72? It turns out that the most common. The only difference is that they were lucky with a set of genes. More recently, scientists have identified genetic traits that they believe may determine the rate at which a person ages.
Because humanity wants to live forever, most scientific research on the aging process focuses on ways to increase natural lifespan. But such studies largely ignore age-related behavioral decline - that feeling when everything is boring, and life is no longer as interesting as it used to be. And this can probably be a problem for a person who will live, say, up to 300 years old, and get tired of life already at 80.
According to Newsweek, a study of nematodes (Caenorhabditis elegans) - annelid worms about 1 mm long - was found to have something interesting in them, which found two unusual genes. These genes, as shown by deeper research, looked as if they had undergone "intellectual editing" as a result of natural selection. They, according to the researchers, and can determine the rate of aging of the body, among other factors, including lifestyle, chronic diseases, environmental influences and many others.
It is worth saying that these specific nematodes are often used by scientists in research aimed at preventing aging. The reason is the extremely short life span, which makes it easy to track changes associated with age.
"Despite the huge interest in studying the rate of aging in order to identify the factors that control it, no such factor has yet been found," the study authors write in the journal Nature. “But we managed to find a genetic basis for changes in aging indicators in Caenorhabditis elegans. We saw that, depending on the set of genes, C. elegans show varied lifespan and age-related decreases in pharyngeal function and locomotion.” Locomotion refers to physical strength and the ability to walk (or, in this case, wriggle), while pharyngeal function refers to the ability to breathe and swallow.
Scientists believe that the rate at which we age and lose such functions depends on the emergence of new genes, like those they observed in nematodes. And this, they point out, is a step forward in the evolutionary theory of aging that could very well lead to a therapy that allows us all to age a little more gracefully.
MARINA LEVICHEVA
