Smoking risks

Beijing - The number of infections has risen to at least 1,884 in an outbreak of hand, foot and mouth disease that has killed 20 children in an eastern Chinese city, the official news agency Xinhua reported Wednesday. However, no new deaths have been...

Jakarta - A 3-year-old Indonesian boy has died from bird flu, raising the country's death toll from the H5N1 deadly disease to 108 - the world's highest, the health ministry said Wednesday. The toddler, identified only as MS, from Central Java distri...

Correlations are pointers - they indicate where future research and development may best be directed. Here, researchers demonstrate a strong correlation between mammalian life span and various mitochondrial characteristics: "In animal cells, mitochondria are semiautonomous organelles [with] their own code and genome (mtDNA). The semiautonomy and restricted resources could result in occasional 'conflicts of interests' with other cellular components, in which mitochondria have greater chances to be 'the weakest link,' thus limiting longevity. ... (1) to what extent the mammalian maximum life span (MLS) is associated with mtDNA base composition? (2) Does mtDNA base composition correlate with another important mitochondria-associated variable - resting metabolic rate (RMR) - and whether they complement each other in determination of MLS? ... Analysis of 140 mammalian species revealed significant correlations ... To the authors' knowledge, it is the highest coefficient of MLS determination that has ever been reported for a comparable sample size. Taking into account substantial errors in estimation of MLS and RMR, it could mean that [this explains] most of the MLS biological variation. [This leads us to] mitochondria as a primary object for longevity-promoting interventions."

View the Article Under Discussion: http://dx.doi.org/10.1089/rej.2008.0676
Read More Longevity Meme Commentary: http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/

This paper proposes that the next step for recent advances in engineering pluripotent stem cells is to create these cells directly, inside the body: "Stem cells are the major factor ensuring mammalian regeneration. Cell replacement therapy is an attempt to follow this natural process. Another strategy suggests a controlled de-differentiation of somatic cells to a stem-like state with subsequent re-differentiation. Indeed, the cultured mammalian somatic cells may be reprogrammed to a pluripotent state by the induction of a specific set of genes. The next logical step toward the goal of organism rejuvenation is to test the possibility of inducing the pluripotent state in somatic cells in vivo. Such an approach has the potential to improve upon and overcome several obstacles facing today's cell replacement therapy." This is an interesting line of thinking; why not simply create new stem cells right where they are needed?

View the Article Under Discussion: http://dx.doi.org/10.1089/rej.2008.0658
Read More Longevity Meme Commentary: http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/

Beijing - The number of children sickened by a severe form of hand-foot-mouth disease in an eastern Chinese city has risen to nearly 1,500 with 20 children dying from the virus, the official news agency Xinhua said Tuesday. As of Tuesday morning loca...