Gene discovered that makes you look younger
Scientists have found the gene which could be the key to looking younger or older than we really are.
Researchers from the University of Leicester and King's College London made the breakthrough as part of research into the relationships between certain diseases with biological rather than chronological age.
British Heart Foundation Professor of Cardiology at the University of Leicester, Prof Nilesh Samani, who co-led the project, said chronological ageing is how old someone is in years, whereas biological age reflects whether the cells of some people are older or younger than suggested by their actual age.
He said: "There is accumulating evidence that the risk of age-associated diseases including heart disease and some types of cancers are more closely related to biological rather than chronological age.
"What we studied are structures called telomeres which are parts of one's chromosomes. Individuals are born with telomeres of certain length and in many cells telomeres shorten as the cells divide and age.
"Telomere length is therefore considered a marker of biological ageing.
"In this study what we found was that those individuals carrying a particular genetic variant had shorter telomeres i.e. looked biologically older."
The team analysed more than 500,000 genetic variations across the entire human genome to identify the variants, found near a gene called TERC.
Weird Science Factoid: The plant life in the oceans make up about 85 per cent of all the greenery on the Earth. We really are a water world...
Join the Weird Science Facebook group here, or follow us on Twitter here or by searching for weirdsciblog.
Want to be sent the 'best' of the Weird Sci Blog every month? Then sign up for Weird News - a newsletter containing more info about the subjects we cover, plus some extra stuff that didn't make the blog. Interested? Subscribe by e-mailing wscience@me.com with the title 'count me in' and we'll do the rest.
Older/Newer
« Lighting the candle on the Space Shuttle | Sound of a supernova »
Authors
Daniel Smith - a long time ago, in a galaxy far away just north of Watford, Daniel fancied himself as a scientist but turned out to be the worst scientist since that bloke who mapped out all those canals on Mars that turned out to be scratches on his telescope's lens. Luckily, he is now not working on the Large Hadron Collider inadvertently creating a black hole that would swallow the world but is safely behind a desk writing this blog, bringing you the fantastical underbelly of nature... weird science.
