科學(xué)家們可能已經(jīng)破解了細胞長壽的秘密

科學(xué)家們可能已經(jīng)破解了細胞長壽的秘密

Do you want to live forever? Well, maybe not forever, but for a long, long, long time? An international group of scientists from several universities has announced an exciting breakthrough in boosting lifespan. In fact, their work has resulted in an organism living five times longer than it normally would have. This is obviously incredibly exciting. The only problem? This “fountain of youth” only applies to worms.

你想永遠活下去嗎?嗯，也許不是永遠，但很長、很長、很長時間?來自幾所大學(xué)的一個國際科學(xué)家小組宣布了一項令人興奮的延長壽命的突破。事實上，他們的工作已經(jīng)使一種生物的壽命比正常情況下長了五倍。這顯然是非常令人興奮的。唯一的問題嗎?這種“青春之泉”只適用于蠕蟲。

The scientists involved in the study worked with a species of nematode worm known as C. elegans., mining its cells in search of the keys to a long life. After performing a couple of special tweaks to the cellular pathways of the worms, the researchers were able to boost their lifespan by around 500%.

參與這項研究的科學(xué)家研究了一種名為秀麗隱桿線蟲的線蟲。為了尋找長壽的鑰匙，科學(xué)家們對其細胞進行了挖掘。在對蠕蟲的細胞路徑進行了一些特殊的調(diào)整之后，研究人員能夠?qū)⑺鼈兊膲勖娱L約500%。

Toying with the cellular pathways of organisms has shown promise for extending lifespan, but the results of this research are still surprising. You see, the researchers actually combined two separate mutations that have been shown to elongate life. One of the modified pathways was expected to double the lifespan of the worm, while the other was expected to extend its life by around 30%.

玩弄生物體的細胞通路已經(jīng)顯示出延長壽命的希望，但這項研究的結(jié)果仍然令人驚訝。你看，研究人員實際上結(jié)合了兩種不同的突變，這兩種突變被證明可以延長壽命。其中一種改造后的途徑預(yù)計將使蠕蟲的壽命延長一倍，而另一種途徑預(yù)計將使其壽命延長約30%。

An increase in lifespan of 130% is nothing to sneeze at, of course, but the results were even better than the scientists could have hoped. The two mutations seemed to combine, with a synergistic effect that resulted in an increase in lifespan of around 500%.

當然，130%的壽命增長是不容小覷的，但結(jié)果比科學(xué)家們所希望的還要好。這兩種突變似乎結(jié)合在一起，產(chǎn)生了協(xié)同效應(yīng)，導(dǎo)致壽命延長了約500%。

This is some seriously incredible news, but unfortunately, it’s still unclear exactly why these two cellular tweaks combined to have such a shocking effect.

這是一些非常令人難以置信的消息，但不幸的是，我們?nèi)匀徊磺宄槭裁催@兩種細胞調(diào)整結(jié)合在一起會產(chǎn)生如此驚人的效果。

“The synergistic extension is really wild,” Jarod A Rollins, co-lead author, said in a statement. “The effect isn’t one plus one equals two, it’s one plus one equals five. Our findings demonstrate that nothing in nature exists in a vacuum; in order to develop the most effective anti-aging treatments we have to look at longevity networks rather than individual pathways.”

該研究報告的共同作者加洛德?羅林斯在一份聲明中說:“這種協(xié)同效應(yīng)的擴展真的很瘋狂。”“其效果不是一加一等于二，而是一加一等于五。我們的發(fā)現(xiàn)表明，自然界中沒有任何東西是存在于真空中的;為了開發(fā)最有效的抗衰老療法，我們必須著眼于長壽網(wǎng)絡(luò)，而不是單個途徑。”

Now, before you go dreaming of a pill that could make you live five times longer, you should know that we’re far from even considering the possibility of experimenting with such things in humans. Sometimes it pays to be a worm.

現(xiàn)在，在你夢想一種能讓你多活五倍的藥丸之前，你應(yīng)該知道，我們甚至還遠遠沒有考慮在人類身上試驗這種東西的可能性。有時做一只蟲子是值得的。