Although I think that in the 21st century, the best way to be healthy is to aproximate the way that paleolithic man ate and lived (minus the extensive fighting and trauma of course), I’m still pretty fascinated by the role modern technology might play in longevity. I’ve read Ray Kurzweil’s books and think the whole “singularity” concept might be a possibility, but I’m more interested in what can be accomplished strictly within the realm of biology. It’s always seemed to me that aging is an evolutionary trait that fosters species preservation—old people die so that young people don’t have to compete with them for scarce resources. But with advances in other technologies, there’s no longer any reason that people have to die, is there? So anyway, this study is pretty interesting:

Now, a team of researchers based at Umeå University in Sweden has pinpointed a protein which is vital in autophagy—the process through which cells break down to recycle themselves when they’re approaching the end of their life.

Thing is, scientists have long known that increasing the rate of autophagy leads to longevity; they just haven’t known how to directly simulate the process. Now, in experiments on mice, the protein SNX18 has been used to accelerate the process, keeping the rodents alive longer. Yes, really.