Slowing down the aging process might be possible one day with supplements derived from gut bacteria. Scientists at Baylor College of Medicine and the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston have identified bacterial genes and compounds that extend the life of and also slow down the progression of tumors and the accumulation of amyloid-beta, a compound associated with Alzheimer’s disease, in the laboratory worm C. elegans.
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“In this work we investigated whether the genetic composition of the microbiome might also be important for longevity,” said Dr. Meng Wang, associate professor of molecular and human genetics at Baylor. “Of the nearly 4,000 bacterial genes we tested, 29, when deleted, increased the worms’ lifespan. Twelve of these bacterial mutants also protected the worms from tumor growth and accumulation of amyloid-beta, a characteristic of Alzheimer’s disease in humans.”
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Further experiments showed that some of the bacterial mutants increased longevity by acting on some of the worm’s known processes linked to aging…The researchers propose that, based on these results, it might be possible in the future to design preparations of bacteria or their compounds that could help slow down the aging process.
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