This Extraordinary Desert Mouse Defies Aging–and it

A protein associated with longevity in humans has recently been found at high concentrations in an extraordinarily long-living mouse. The discovery makes the case for more research into a poorly-understood, potentially gene-determined, metabolic pathway for healthy aging that could help scientists better understand the aging process across mammals. The golden spiny mouse is unusual among [...] The post This Extraordinary Desert Mouse Defies Aging–and it Could Change Human Longevity appeared first on Good News Network .

Active during the day rather than at night, if a human being had the equivalent life-expectancy of this resident of the Middle-Eastern deserts, than we wouldn’t need a Supreme Court to interpret the Founders’ language in the Constitution: they’d still be alive today and we could ask them about it. “Mice in the wild typically live around 9 months,” says senior

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author Vishwa Deep Dixit, a Professor of Pathology at Yale School of Medicine. “But some of these golden spiny mice are living out in the desert for up to five years. And that’s just what we’ve been able to observe; their maximum lifespan is unknown.” “In order to live that long, they have to forage, they have to avoid predators. So it’s not like they’re living this long in a way that we would think of as ‘aged.’” What the Yale professor means is that their “healthspan” seems to be as long as their “lifespan,” or described differently, the mice retain many of their physical and mental capabilities right up until their eldest days. Biology’s primary objective as regards aging is to maximize the effectiveness of a breeding strategy. Nature is a brutal environment where most animals die young from predators or the elements, so natural selection has few reasons to select long life as a...

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