Peptide Found to Extend Life By 30 Percent

Eight years ago, a researcher at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas identified a gene in mice that, when damaged, made the mice grow old fast and die sooner than they should. As the Washington Post reports, the scientist,  Makoto Kuro-o, dubbed the gene Klotho, after the Greek goddess who spins the thread of life, and started to look for ways to alter it. Kuro-o learned that the gene produces a peptide that, as the Post puts it, “modulates a crucial biological pathway involved in a panoply of basic
metabolic functions that has become the focus of aging research in
recent years.”  Recently, Kuro-o found that those mice whose genes were tweaked to produce twice the normal amount of a the peptide lived up to 30 percent longer than untweaked mice. Next up: The scientist and his crew will inject the substance into normal mice
to see if it extends their life spans, and take a close look at
humans to learn if levels of the protein are correlated with
longevity. Previous research suggests that that may be the case. People with one variation of the Klotho gene are known to be prone to
age-related diseases like heart attacks, strokes and osteoporosis. It’s another variation of the gene everyone is waiting for.  Read more.