A toast to long life

摘要

In the spring of 1512, three wooden vessels commanded by the Spanish explorer Ponce de Leon left the warm Caribbean waters off Puerto Rico in search of the fountain of youth. Fuelled by his desire for immortality, Ponce de Leon was convinced that drinking from this legendary spring would confer a state of eternal youth. Local legend suggested that the fountain could be found in the lands to the north and that it was surrounded by magnificent flowering plants. Over the next few months, the explorers travelled from island to island, tasting rivers and lakes (Fig. 1) until short supplies and hostile natives forced them to abandon their quest. Today, the once desolate shores of Florida―the 'land to the north' that Ponce de Leon discovered inadvertently on his voyage―are crowded with ageing retirees who yearn just as passionately for the magical elixir of youth. Although the past two decades have seen an explosion in our understanding of the molecular regulation of ageing, a simple potion or chemical that could slow the ageing process seems as elusive today as it was 500 years ago. But on page 191 in this issue, Howitz et al. present a study of longevity in yeast that could represent the first step towards creating such a hypothetical elixir.