>>13290707Hard to say really. The mechanisms aren't fully understood yet.
Telomer degradation plays a part, but rebuilding the telomer can cause cancer. Epigenetics play a part, and we hardly understnad that for now. Autophagy plays a part, and that too is only partially understood, with some conflicting models. Transposons play a very important part, they cause most of the mutations responsible for age related ilnesses, but they are not fully mapped yet, and play a part in preventing cancers from forming in early stages, though they also cause cancer in the long run. The miRNA and piRNA pathways play a part, but that too is only partially understood. Protein turnover is also important, and faulty proteins cause mutations, contributing to ageing and cancer.
The problem is that ageing isn't one thing. Its the accumulation of problems and faults over time. Figureing out how to silence or all together remove transposons would increase our lifespan significantly. ptimising some genes can increase lifespan slightly, regrowing telomers can increase lifespan moderately and optimising cell turover, well we don't even know what that would do yet, but there is some very interesting research going on there.
Over all, it could be a few decades, or it could be centuryes before we have a way to increase the human lifespan by more than just a few years.
