The Fish that Refuses to Age
There is no evidence for physiological decline with age in the bigmouth buffalo, a long-lived freshwater fish
Aging anomalies
As we age, many of our bodily functions start to decline. To slow this down, or perhaps even prevent it, we need to understand the many intertwined processes that underlie aging.
In that quest, we can either zoom in or out.
Zooming in refers to untangling the many molecular processes involved in aging. Studies in this area range from seeking genetic signatures of aging, over investigating epigenetic alterations and their interactions with metabolism, to unraveling enzymatic pathways.
We can also zoom out and look at groups or populations, such as healthy centenarians. If we find that most of these hale hundred-year-olds share, for example, gene variants, lifestyle factors, or physiological traits (for example, their methionine metabolism), we might have a solid lead for further investigations into the aging process and how to tweak it.
But, we can zoom out even further and study animals. On average, body size tends to correlate with lifespan across species. The bigger you are, the longer you live — for various reasons, such as a (relatively) slower metabolism…
