Hacking Aging

What would you say if I told you that aging happens not because of accumulation of stresses, but rather because of the intrinsic properties of the gene network of the organism? I’m guessing you’d be like: o_0.

So, here’s the deal. My biohacker friends led by Peter Fedichev and Sergey Filonov in collaboration with my old friend and the longevity record holder Robert Shmookler Reis published a very cool paper. They proposed a way to quantitatively describe the two types of aging – negligible senescence and normal aging. We all know that some animals just don’t care about time passing by. Their mortality doesn’t increase with age. Such negligibly senescent species include the notorious naked mole rat and a bunch of other critters like certain turtles and clams to name a few. So the paper explains what it is exactly that makes these animals age so slowly – it’s the stability of their gene networks.

A Possible Way to Cure Baldness

Meanwhile there is something important going on in the fight against baldness.

As in the majority of tissues, the hair follicle has stem cells. There are two types of stem cells that are responsible for the continuous renewal of the follicles. The first type is called active stem cells and they start dividing quite easily. Stem cells of the second type are called quiescent and in case of the new hair growth they don’t start dividing as easily. At the same time, the new hair is based primarily on quiescent cells, which attracted close attention of researchers to these cells. At first people thought that baldness was due to this type of cells. 

Neverending Sex

Let’s formulate the task of life extension slightly differently. Something like this…How can we extend sex appeal?

Gyms and beauty salons are in charge of this question now. There is some success, but it’s mostly superficial. Plastic surgery only masks, but doesn’t delay the processes of aging.

Expanding sex appeal is a complex task. Its aspects include both beauty and the activity of the brain. To be sexually attractive we have to be smart and fun. One cannot solve the problem of dementia with makeup. 

The mTOR Story Part 1 – What Makes This Important Pro-Aging Molecule Active?

I have mentioned mTOR as one of the main aging genes on multiple occasions. It’s about time I tell you what it is, what it does and why it is so important in aging.

mTOR has a little m in front of TOR, which means I am speaking about mammals. It technically means «mechanistic» TOR, but think of it as the molecule that mice and all of us have, whereas in worms is it just TOR.

mTOR gene produces one mTOR protein that can act in two pretty different ways. mTOR does so, because it forms two complexes with other molecules. These complexes are called mTORC1 and mTORC2. Yeah, I know, it’s a lot of letters, but C1 and C2 stand for «complex 1» and «complex 2», so it kinda makes sense.

So, how are these complexes different? For starters, they have different proteins that are part of the complexes, and these differences define the drastic variance in functions.

mTOR is one of the most studies genes that the scientists have known about for decades, however we still don’t know much about how those complexes react to different signals in the cells, especially mTORC2. We know much more about what the first complex does, but not really a lot about the second complex. This is not good, because both of them play a huge, enormous role in aging and in age-related disease like cancer and metabolic disorders like diabetes.

It is Unethical Not to Use Genetic Engineering

When I hear that the conversation is about an ethical problem I anticipate that right now the people are going to put everything upside down and end with common sense. Appealing to ethics has always been the weapon of conservatism, the last resort of imbecility.

How does it work? At the beginning you have some ideas, but in the end it’s always a “no”. The person speaking on the behalf of ethics or bioethics is always against the progress, because he or she is basing their opinion on their own conjectures. What if the GMO foods will crawl out of the garden beds and eat us all? What if there will be inequality when some will use genetic engineering for their kids and some won’t? Let’s then close down the schools and universities – the main source of inequality. What if some will get the education and other won’t?

That’s exactly the position that ‪Elon Musk took by fearing the advances in genetic engineering. Well, first of all, there already is plenty of inequality. It is mediated by social system, limited resources and genetic diversity. First of all, why should we strive for total equality? More precisely, why does the plank of equality have to be based on a low intellectual level? How bad is a world where the majority of people are scientists? How bad is a world where people live thousands of years and explore deep space? It’s actually genetic engineering that gives us these chances. From the ‪#‎ethics‬ point of view things are visa versa. It’s refusing the very possibility of helping people is a terrible deed. Let’s not improve a person, because if we do what if this person becomes better than everybody else? Let’s not treat this person, because if we do he might live longer than everybody else? Isn’t this complete nonsense?

There’s another aspect of ‪#‎geneticengineering‬ – people always talk about improving the children, however genetic engineering first and foremost gives the opportunity to improve the already living people. Gene therapies already exist and it would be wonderful if we could live to see the moment when they are able to improve our health and intellect many fold. It is obvious that these technologies have to be safe. So, if we can help a child or a grown up, let’s do it immediately. This is the real ethic position.

I will also allow myself to speculate that genetic engineering is the fastest track towards Artificial Intelligence. The majority thinks that AI will arise in a computer, but I think it might be easier to grow the superbrain and train it. And yes, with the help of genetic engineering.

Fours Stages of Curing Aging

Curing aging has 4 stages: mild aging deceleration, dramatic aging deceleration, achieving negligible senescence and rejuvenation. Today we can definitively claim that the task of mild aging deceleration is theoretically solved.

We know the drugs and interventions that slow down aging in mammals. The only thing that we don’t know is dosages, regimes and drug combinations. Defining all of that is the goal of pre-clinical and clinical studies. They can be started immediately. It is also a good idea to do clinical studies of various diets aimed at improving human longevity.

Dramatic aging deceleration will be achieved using gene therapy. Breakthrough studies of lifespan extension in old model animals happened in this area quite recently. We know the genes and delivery methods, now we need a set of powerful experiments aimed at radical life extension. The subject of the intervention will not only be the human genome, but the genomes of the human microbiota.

Rearrangement of how the genome works, as well as genetically modified stem cell therapy and therapeutic cloning can provide negligible senescence.

However, rejuvenation of the organism is likely to be competing with the idea and the very possibility of changing the body as the personality substrate to something else. It is likely that our goal will be not the youth, but creating a more advanced organism capable of solving the task of its own indestructability.

Longevity Cookbook Indiegogo Campaign Is the Most Effective Step You Can Take towards Your Longevity

Something amazing has happened! We have launched our Longevity Cookbook Indiegogo Campaign.

Aging steals away your most valuable resource: time. The Longevity Cookbook is a strategy guide to help you get more time to experience the joy from everything that you like in life. Take yourself on a journey starting with nutrients and exercise regimes that goes on to exploring the usage of genetically modified symbiotic organisms and using gene therapy to boost your own longevity.

Contributing to ‪#LongevityCookbook‬ is the best way you can spend your money, because we are fighting for your life. Please, contribute and share the Longevity Cookbook campaign. Let’s defeat aging together!

Discipline Is More Powerful than Motivation

I know a bunch of people who support life extension, but they are very busy. They are going to first of all deal with their stuff and only then become involved in anything related to longevity. It’s just that there is always stuff to do every day. Meanwhile, life is passing by. We may be simply late. Late by 10 years, by 1 year, by only 1 day. There can be no situation more stupid than being late to buy «my life» ticket. There is so few people in our field. To fight aging you don’t really need motivation, you need discipline. You have to just force yourself. Simply force yourself.

You Are Invited to Longevity Cookbook Indiegogo Launch Party

Longevity Cookbook Indiegogo Launch Party

5 reasons why you should invite your friends to the Longevity Cookbook Indiegogo Launch Party:

1. Do you want your friends to have better and longer lives? Take care of them! Let them know that they can extend their lives and the lives of many people around them.
2. To slow down and eventually defeat aging people should unite. Longevity Cookbook Party is an amazing opportunity to meet like-minded people, think of new projects together and have fun.
3. Longevity Cookbook is the strategy of defeating aging. We are launching a project that is going to change everything. Participate in this historic event! Our book will save millions of lives because we will provide scientifically proven information about how to preserve your life.
4. Often people don’t know how to help the cause of longevity. Now there is a clear answer! It is crowdfunding for Longevity Cookbook.
5. And photos of course! We will have tons of cool pictures taken from the Party!

Reposting this is making a contribution to an action of peace, goodness and fairness.

I am looking forward to seeing everybody on May 14 at Mighty club in San Francisco at 119 Utah street!

RSVP – https://www.facebook.com/events/1750304398529385/