From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Sat Dec 16 2000 - 06:47:08 MST
Barbara Lamar <altamiratexas@earthlink.net> writes:
> It would be interesting to watch several hundred generations of
> offspring of flies with disabled INDY gene, subjected to various
> sorts of stress--for example exposure to carcinogens and shortages
> of food.
Food shortages ought to have the obvious effect - INDY flies will be
worse off than normal flies. Stress might be interesting, since most
of the life extension genes found so far have ties to stress
protection systems. It might also be interesting to see what happens
if you insert both INDY and MTH (Methusalah) in the same fly - do they
add?
> Also interesting to follow generations of offspring produced during
> latter portion of extended lifespan.
I wonder if genetic damage in flies behaves in the same way as in
humans? In humans the number of complications and cases of chromosome
damage increase with the age of at least the mother (I don't know
about the father).
> Also would be interesting to compare populations of calorie-restricted
> animals (flies or whatever) with populations of animals with disabled INDY
> gene.
There was a nice paper in Nature or PNAS some months ago about mapping
gene expression in young, old and old calorie-restricted mice. I never
managed to interpret the results in a neat way, but it looked like CR
changed gene expression at least partially in a more youthful
direction. It would be fun to see what INDY does.
So much to reasearch, so little time and funding!
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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