Following the example of the mole rat
The long-lived rodent gives hope to people
Yuri Drize, "Search"
Recently, Academician Vladimir Skulachev, director of the Belozersky Research Institute of Physico-Chemical Biology of Moscow State University, sent to one of the most prestigious international scientific journals, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), another article about the unusual mechanism by which some animals prolong their lives. And if the previous publications, Vladimir Petrovich believes, were more like predictions, then the current one answers the question of questions: how to turn off the aging program in humans? And the African naked digger (in English - mole rat, that is, the mole rat) pushed the researcher to solve an unprecedented task – it was he who turned scientists' ideas about life expectancy.
The beast, frankly speaking, is not the cutest. And his life is unenviable: he lives underground, does not see white light, therefore he is blind, and there is no wool on him. It feeds on the roots of a plant resembling our celery, only in Africa it is large. The size of a rodent is slightly larger than a mouse. It has a number of features that distinguish this rather ugly creature from other mammals.
It was discovered by the famous German zoologist Eduard Ruppel in Ethiopia in the middle of the XIX century. However, the global interest of gerontologists has attracted only recently due to its longevity: zoologists from the USA have had a naked digger for almost 36 years, clearly not going to get old. For such animals, the age is unthinkable, refuting the recognized theory: the smaller the mammal, the shorter its age. The mouse confirms this pattern, its term is only three years. And the naked digger refutes, which attracted the attention of researchers.
– The matter, of course, is not in the race for the championship title in terms of the duration of existence, – Vladimir Petrovich is sure. – There are already recognized leaders here: a whale and a turtle. And the super champion is the Greenland polar shark, it lives almost 500 years. That's not the point. Unlike many of my colleagues, I believe that aging is the result of a certain program that determines the duration of life. In a naked digger, it clearly failed or simply turned off, and he continues to exist, practically without aging. It is clear that a rodent cannot be compared with a human, but people also seem to have an aging program.
Our group has been studying the naked digger for more than three years, when the Berlin Zoo kindly provided us with 66 individuals. And today I come to the conclusion that Darwinian natural selection has a minimal effect on some inhabitants of the planet, including humans and the naked digger. Thanks to evolution, they have fulfilled all their due and are moving on their beaten path. There is evidence that the aging program of a modern person, which brings him to the grave, is included in its term. The results of this "subversive" activity become apparent after 55-60 years.
– Is it possible to disable the program?
– Yes, but first we need to formulate a task. It is simple: just to prolong a person's youth by pushing his age limit as far as possible. I believe that aging is caused by at least three typical causes. Biological (when life expectancy is limited genetically), chemical and physical. The bowhead whale has lived for more than two centuries. His weak point is his eyesight. The lens eventually fails, and it is impossible to replace it, as a person, with an artificial one. There is a zoological anecdote that old whales can be washed ashore due to blindness. Their echo sounder warns of danger (obstacle), but they are not able to see it.
Elephants chew grass all their lives from morning to evening. Even the strongest teeth are erased, and the giants are threatened with starvation. However, nature has provided for this: a person's teeth change twice – first milk, then permanent. An elephant has as many as six times, and that's not enough. Because the elephant lives "only" 65 years. In this example, biological and physical aging are intertwined.
The same physical problems arise in humans, but, thanks to progress, they are solvable, and this has nothing to do with Darwinian selection. And I set a goal to figure out how to disable a program that restricts a person's life.
– That is?
– I think that two principles work and struggle with each other in the living nature at once: the bad and the good. The article we sent to the press states: there are two programs – aging and anti-aging. Our goal is to turn off the "bad" one, leaving only the "good" one. This is what we have been doing for the last 16 years. Our hypothesis is that aging is a slow poisoning of the body with toxic forms of oxygen. They are formed inside the cell in special organelles – mitochondria (a person has organs, and a cell has organelles). We introduce into the body a new antioxidant developed by us that is able to find mitochondria in the cell, it penetrates into it and does not allow the formation of toxic forms of oxygen. This "interrupts the chain of events" and should slow down, and perhaps turn off the aging program.
– But this is a theory, but what will it look like in practice?
– You will go to the pharmacy, buy medicine and slow down the development of old age. But it will happen, unfortunately, not so quickly. It takes years for the cure for old age to get into the pharmacy.
– What will it be?
– It is a bitter, colorless and odorless liquid containing the antioxidant SkQ1. It is he who does not allow mitochondria to form toxic forms of oxygen. I have been taking the antioxidant I invented every morning for eight years now and I continue to work. I am the dean of the faculty and director of the institute at Moscow State University, I publish the cited popular scientific journal "Biochemistry" and am approaching the age limit of 85 years, when the probability of death within a year is 20%.
SkQ1 already benefits the elderly. This is the active principle of Visomitin eye drops, which help with senile diseases such as dry eye syndrome and cataracts. The drug successfully passed clinical trials several years ago, and today more than 2 million vials have been delivered to Russian pharmacies.
– We completely forgot about the naked digger. What place does it occupy in your research today?
– In an article sent to PNAS magazine, we compare a mouse and a naked digger. And, it seems, they have found what makes him "forever young" – a program that prevents poisoning of the body with toxic forms of oxygen. The mouse does not have this program, and it lives as long as it should, about three years. And the digger's life hours go differently, and he begins to age at least 10 times later or does not age at all.
– The digger is fine, he is underground, and the mouse is in constant fear that someone will eat it…
– White laboratory mice do not know that they can be hunted. And still, even in ideal conditions, they live for three years. And the digger's life is not so cloudless: he lives in the center of a colossal maze with an area of two football fields at a depth of half a meter. The center of the maze is occupied by the "queen" and "king" – they multiply, and the rest is forbidden.
Perhaps the digger gave us a sensation: we have preliminary data that a person in his youth has a similar mechanism for slowing down aging, but with age it turns off. The task is to prevent this shutdown or compensate for the decrease in the body's defense. It seems that the balance of aging and anti-aging, as I said, remains at a completely acceptable level until the middle age of a person. Our task is to act on the aging program with a drug I invented.
– Is our brain designed for longevity? Won't we turn into primitive creatures, like a naked digger?
– I don't think so. We also found an anti-aging program in the digger's brain.
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