>>13639812There is decent progress being made on this front. There are several avenues, several points of attack when it comes to the ageing process, and there is slow but steady progress being made on all front.
PIWI piRNA pathway:
Its what the genetics department at my uni is researching, and how it can help make high longevity transgenic animals. This is the research i have just joined. Quite promising, as there are active immortal cells in humans with this pathway active, namely the germline progenitor cells. There are also hydra which are immortal, and they also have this pathway active in all their cells.
Cell turnover:
Ageing is esentually accumulation of somatic mutations. These often happen at mitosis, and any cell which proliferates focuses less on DNA repair and more on synthesizing the necesseary proteins. There are different methods being tryed to combat this here, Mutations that decrease the effectiveness of insulin receptors puts cells in maintenace mode insted of proliferation mode. In rats this has doubled, an in nematodes has quadroupled lifespan. Others are working on better gene repair, lower protein turnover, cellular longevity...
Telomers and telomerase:
I actually don't have much to say on this front, other than the fact that recent therapy methods have increased telomer length by 30% so thats good too. Not my area of research though, so i don't no more than the basics.
Apoptosis research:
The role of apoptosis in ageing and development is not fully understood, but it has been shown that mutations can have significant effect on longevity in both positive and negative way. Reserach in this are is also very active, though it has died down a bit lately, as it seems not to be as important as initially thought.
Epigenetics:
A very recent discovery is that cromatin structure changes as we age, and cromatin problems can cause progeria. Histone and DNA methylation also plays a part, but we don't really know how.
