DATE: October 06, 2008

CONTACT: Yuqing Dong, 864-656-7620
ydong@clemson.edu

WRITER: Peter Kent, 864-656-4355
pkent@clemson.edu

Clemson researcher part of team discovering piece of life-span puzzle

CLEMSON — Is there a “Methuselah” gene? It’s unlikely science will offer us a life span as long as the biblical character’s 969 years, but a Clemson University researcher is part of a circle of scientists making strides in understanding aging, and it is realistic to look forward to longer and healthier lives in the near future.

Yuqing Dong, assistant professor in the biological sciences department and member of the university’s Institute for Engaged Aging, is a co-author with Cornell University scientists who have identified a “new player important for aging” regulation in an animal used for longevity studies. The research is reported in the Sept. 30 issue of "PLoS Biology," a peer-reviewed international journal published by the Public Library of Science. The article is titled “Caenorhabditis elegans HCF-1 Functions in Longevity Maintenance as a DAF-16 Regulator."

Aging is not just a simple fact of life. Scientists see life span as a complex process in which genetics and environmental stresses interact involving the whole animal. Regulating the genes — switching them on or off — that control aging may increase healthy, active life spans dramatically.

Why is it, ask scientists, that animals have dramatic differences in life spans? Size does not explain the difference. A canary lives only a few years while a bat can live as many as 50 years, yet both are similar in size. And even animals vastly different in size have similar factors and pathways that control life span.

Scientists have learned about human aging and longevity thanks to a round worm about the size of a comma. Caenorhabditis elegans — C. elegans for short — shares a number of similarities with humans. Using C. elegans as an animal model for genetic research applicable to humans earned three scientists a Nobel Prize in 2002.

Among C. elegans’s research qualities is its life span: about two weeks. Making changes in the genetics and environment stresses, such as heat, nutrition, exposure to ultraviolet light, can be observed throughout the life stages of the worm. By turning off one gene, scientists were able to double the life span of C. elegans. What’s more, the worm not only lived twice as long, it was healthy and active. One researcher said it was like looking at someone who was acting like a 45-year-old and finding out he was really a 90-year-old.

The research by Dong and his colleagues focused on the master factor DAF-16, which some scientists call the “Fountain of Youth” gene. They identified a co-factor that, when deactivated, can prolong C. elegans’s life span by 40 percent and improve the worm’s resistance to damage to its DNA and proteins.

So far, researchers have identified several hundred genes in C. elegans that may affect life span. With the support from the Foundation of American Federation for Aging Research, Dong’s laboratory is collecting the research results, identifying individual genes and grouping them by their link to environmental stresses. Working with Dong are doctoral students Yao Yao (Beijing Normal University, China), a cell biologist, and Sujay Guha (University of Mysore, India), a microbiologist.

Once the genes and groups are cataloged, Dong and other researchers will conduct experiments, activating and de-activating them to find out their influence on longevity.

Scientists say lengthening life spans is just a part of the potential of their research. Someday, scientists and doctors will be able to turn off genes that cause disease and genetic malformations and turn on genes that reduce illnesses and enhance health.

END