RE: Extropy Now - Life Extension

From: Don Klemencic (klemencc@sgi.net)
Date: Fri Apr 07 2000 - 23:45:34 MDT


Ron,

What I wrote there is part of an excerpt from an article written by Dr.
Gregory Fahy (now a research director at Twenty First Century Medicine)
entitled "Possible Medical Applications of Nanotechnology: Hints from the
Field of Aging Research". It appears as chapter 12 in Nanotechnology:
Research and Perspectives; Papers from the First Foresight Conference on
Nanotechnology which was published by MIT Press in 1992.

Since this is 8 years old it would be very interesting to know if Dr. Fahy
has ever updated his remarks. I just a moment ago did a search on the net
for DNA polymerase alpha and Elongation Factor and found a number of very
technical articles. Someone like Fahy could summarize and interpret what
progress has been made.

Don Klemencic

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-extropians@extropy.com [mailto:owner-extropians@extropy.com] On
Behalf Of Dehede011@aol.com
Sent: Friday, April 07, 2000 8:43 AM
To: extropians@extropy.com
Subject: Extropy Now - Life Extension

In a message dated 4/6/00 9:25:38 PM Pacific Daylight Time, klemencc@sgi.net
writes:

<< My inference based on the DNA polymerase alpha story that it should be
 possible to prevent replicative senescence and compromised DNA repair
 appears to have been confirmed beyond all reasonable expectations by Mike
 West's findings. West claims to have totally conquered the cellular aging
 clock by using just two naturally occurring molecular triggers that can
 restore the youthful phenotype to any one of four entirely different types
 of senescent cell (endothelial cells, astrocytes, chondrocytes, and
 fibroblasts). (17) Finally, the possible significance of elongation factor
 one has been delightfully demonstrated by a paper of Shepard et al. In
which
 flies made transgenic for EF-1 so as to avoid or postpone its down
 regulation with age were shown to have mean life spans equivalent to the
 maximum life spans of control flies. (18) However, this experiment is not
 yet definitive and awaits rigorous verification.
>>

Don
    That is really interesting. Do you have any predictions for when we can
expect a treatment to help us? Is there anything we can do now as
individuals?
Ron Harrison



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