Bill Andrews has spent two decades unlocking the molecular mechanisms of aging. His mission: to extend the human life span to 150 years–or die tryingÂ
Doctors tend to look at bodily decline through the prism of so-called diseases of aging, our increasing susceptibility over time to killers like cancer and heart disease. But in the 1950s, research biologists began to view aging itself as the disease. When free radicals scavenge electrons from their neighbors, they set in motion some ugly chain reactions. Cholesterol molecules become oxidized and begin to interact with the artery walls to form atherosclerosis-causing plaque, for instance, or the DNA in the cell nucleus suffers mutations, laying the groundwork for cancer. Later refinements of this theory emphasize the role of the mitochondria, the cellular power plants that help convert glucose into energy. As the mitochondria age, they spew out increasing amounts of the free radicals that hamper energy production and damage the entire cell, accelerating our all-systems decline.
Among cell biologists, these mechanisms remain to this day the most accepted ways of explaining what’s happening to that face reflecting back at us in our bathroom mirror. But telomere science has opened up the possibility of drilling even deeper into the molecular bedrock of aging.Â
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