Genetics of Increased Longevity and Retarded Aging in Mice

摘要

People live longer than horses, dogs, and mice and are, in general, pleased with this state of affairs. The broad outline of mammalian senescence is easy to recognize in 3-year-old mice, 12-year-old dogs, 20-year-old horses, 35-year-old chimpanzees, and 75-year-old humans and features diminished reproductive, musculoskeletal, and immune performance, diminished visual and auditory abilities, reproducible changes in gene expression, hormonal regulation, and tissue structure, and exponentially increasing risks of neoplastic, infectious, and other forms of potentially lethal illness. Not all of these ill effects occur in each person and not all features are equally salient in each species, of course, but the patterns are sufficiently similar that, should a new species of mammal be discovered in some hidden, edenic grotto, there would be no difficulty in sorting the population, with reasonable accuracy, into young and old adults. Given adequate motivation--a pot of gold at the top of a long hill, for example, or its species-specific equivalent--a population of humans, horses, dogs, or Martians will sort itself nicely into age classes during the race to the prize.