Wrinkles, gray hair and other unpleasant corollaries advancing age may be less inevitable than you think. An experiment in gene therapy is able to "reprogram" the internal genetic clock of mouse cells was able, in six weeks, to visibly rejuvenate the animals, improving cardiovascular health, the strength of the spine and life expectancy.

Internal mechanism. Research published in Cell, it suggests that aging does not necessarily have to proceed in a single, inevitable direction, but its symptoms can be modulated in some way: getting older would not be, that is, the simple result of time passing, but a mechanism governed by a "" genetic timer on which, to a certain extent, it is possible to intervene.

Rewind. Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, a scientist at the Salk Institute in La Jolla (California), experimented on mice a used genetic engineering so far in the laboratory, to bring the adult cells, such as skin, the condition of pluripotent stem cells, similar to those found in embryos.

Not entirely. These induced pluripotent stem cells can transform into any other type of cell in the human body; in the study, however, the hands of their genetic clock have been brought back only partially, enough to rejuvenate the cells, but not enough to make them lose the acquired specialization.

The cure". The study took place intermittently activating and deactivating the four genes in mice used in the past to transform skin cells into induced pluripotent. The rodents were engineered so that these genes from activating each time the animals were exposed to a particular antibiotic dissolved in water. The research was conducted on specimens suffering from progeria, a condition that causes premature aging of the organism.

The results. After six weeks, the mice appeared younger in the skin and muscle tone, and with a lifespan of 30% more. They have shown an increase in cancer risk, the evidence that the treatment had not gone so far as to zero points of all the genetic timer, a condition that can lead to uncontrolled cell proliferation.

And in humans? The treatment used in the study can not be replicated in humans (or at least not in the same conditions and not before a few decades). This approach will not lead to immortality so sure, because probably some limits of human life today can not be overcome. But it could serve to significantly improve the quality of existence even in old age.

From Focus