Today’s open access commentary is, I think, an overreaction to present challenges in engineering greater longevity via metabolic manipulation. I would be the first to say that altering the operation of metabolism is not a good path forward, at least if the goal is to engineer greater healthy longevity in our species. Cellular metabolism and its intersection with aging is ferociously complex and poorly understood in detail. Those details matter greatly: there are many feedback loops and switches based on protein levels that will change from beneficial to harmful for reasons that only become apparent after years of painstaking research. The best-studied mechanisms that link cellular metabolism to individual and species longevity have been under investigation for decades, and are still at a point at …
It is Faintly Ridiculous to Propose that Human Life Span Cannot be Increased by Altering Metabolism
Today’s open access commentary is, I think, an overreaction to present challenges in engineering greater longevity via metabolic manipulation. I would be the first to say that altering the operation of metabolism is not a good path forward, at least if the goal is to engineer greater healthy longevity in our species. Cellular metabolism and its intersection with aging is ferociously complex and poorly understood in detail. Those details matter greatly: there are many feedback loops and switches based on protein levels that will change from beneficial to harmful for reasons that only become apparent after years of painstaking research. The best-studied mechanisms that link cellular metabolism to individual and species longevity have been under investigation for decades, and are still at a point at …