Mortality - Fountains of Youth

I listened to a really interesting topic; it was on extending life. I believe all of us would be interested in this; maybe there are people who are tired of life and just want to rest but most of the people would be trilled to live longer and stay young. I learned that rats live up to 3 years and squirrels up to 25. They still don’t know why different animals and things have a longer life expectancy. Human’s average life is about 70 years. The scientists have been performing experiments on worms to try and extend their life, and it has worked. There are 20 thousand genes in a worm. The Def 2 gene they call the Grim Reaper because it is the one who is shortening the worm’s life. Yeah, there is death gene. Scientists have extended the worms life from 14 to 28 days by damaging this gene, kind of like cutting it shorter. This might not seem a lot but it doubled the worm’s life span and it is a huge change. There is also a Def 16 gene that is the youth gene, keeping worms young.  By damaging the Grim Reaper gene it liberates the Def 16 gene and now it springs into action; the Grim Reaper gene kind of squashes the activity of the Def 16 gene.  So now the Def 16 gene has been like extended which extends the worms life span. This is some great stuff. The scientists are working to see if this could work on humans. They haven’t found things like it but the possibility is still there. I mean how great would this be, to live longer by science?