Evidence that diet can profoundly affect aging is beginning to emerge, sometimes through targeted studies and other times by accident. While breeding mutant C. elegans worms for an unrelated experiment, Sean Curran and Shanshan Pang, a pair of researchers who study aging at the University of Southern California, noticed that certain mutant worms had considerably shorter life spans depending on their diet. The findings led the two to uncover a compensatory molecular mechanism for dealing with different menu items.
Many researchers are knocking down genes in C. elegans to understand the genetic basis of longevity, but this study takes into account that the interplay between diet and genes can influence life span, says Jennifer Watts of Washington State University who was not involved in the work. “That’s what’s unique about this study and makes it a breakthrough,” she says.
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