On BioScience and Life and Such

Afterthoughts in H+

In Uncategorized on June 14, 2009 at 9:15 pm

post to news.thinkgene.com

A large glass of red wine contains about three...
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Exam done, and I finally have some time to read something of my own choice entirely – H+magazine.

After reading through about half, – skipping over some over-the-top adds (Neurvana p.6), realizing that  futurists talk has become = = Kurzweil talk, and deciding to opt out of some speculative diet recommendations (deuterium food p. 13) –

I read about breeding drosophila selecting for late-in-life first offspring. Granted, to see effects in humans will take some time, but still a brilliant idea, – and so simple:

Rose’s years of painstaking Methuselah fly stud-servicing produced a fracking miracle: flies that live 4.5 times longer than ordinary flies. Do that with humans for 10,000 years – 500 generations – and you’ll start approaching rose’s results. But to get the advantages today you’d have to start back before there were cities.- from p.18-19

Before there were cities -2 I believe, because …. – it’s already happening. At least in my part of the world. I personally know very few people who’ve had children before the age of 30, – many of my friends will be approaching 40 before family-life starts. Taking my circle of family and friends as a case report, the previous generation was 5-10 years younger when they had their first child. Keeping this up, we soon will be 50-60 before having children. That means evolutionary selection criteria will have to change dramatically to keep up.

So let sirtuins be sirtuins and calorie-restriction pass you by – life extension is coming our way…. – in 498 generations or so….

Keep drinking red wine though –  it’s good for so many things.

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