For decades, scientists have wrestled with the question: To what extent do genetics determine lifespan? Researchers now say that, thanks to research published today (September 29) in Science, they have evidence that genes directly control how long mice live—and that these genes have human orthologs. But female mice, which live longer than males, have different genes associated with longer life spans than male mice.
Study coauthor Robert Williams, a geneticist at the University of Tennessee, says that the study addresses the question of whether “there are actually genes that control longevity,” as opposed to exerting an indirect effect by lessening disease risk. Based on the results, he says he and his fellow investigators “think there are fundamental events controlling generic aging, rather than just disease.”
Williams and his colleagues used a dataset initially gathered in 2003 for the Interventions Testing Program (ITP), a research program to determine whether certain dietary ...
