Forever young and forever drunk
The main rules for prolonging youth with alcohol: start from the first days of life, take literally a drop, but regularly, do not have a snack and ... be born a worm.
Researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles, working under the guidance of Professor Steven G. Clarke, have found that small doses of alcohol can be very useful for the larvae of Caenorhabditis elegans.
Bacteria-feeding C.elegans are ubiquitous in the soil. The process of growth and maturation of the worm from the larva to the adult is only a few days. However, under stress, larvae can transition to an alternative state, the so-called L1 phase, characterized by a lack of growth.
In conditions of complete lack of nutrients, the larva in the L1 phase can live an average of 10-12 days.
The results of an earlier study by the authors showed that the addition of cholesterol to the culture medium increases the life expectancy of such larvae twice, up to 20 days or more. However, analyzing the results of experiments, scientists have suggested that this effect may well be due not to cholesterol, but to ethanol used as its solvent.
To test this hypothesis, they repeated experiments and compared the life expectancy of worm larvae contained in an environment without additives (including - without crumbs of nutrients!), as well as in an environment with the addition of ethanol and cholesterol dissolved in ethanol.
The obtained results confirmed the assumption: the life expectancy of the larvae in the last two versions of the experiment were comparable, which indicated the complete uselessness of cholesterol, the laurels of which were transferred to ethanol.
Moreover, the repetition of experiments on worms of the pcm-1 line, which do not have a functional mechanism for repairing protein damage, showed that the addition of cholesterol to the medium significantly reduced the lifespan of the larvae compared to the effect exerted by ethanol. This suggests that, under certain conditions, cholesterol may even be toxic to worm larvae.
The ethanol concentrations used are exceptionally small and have the described effect only in the range from 1 millimole (0.005%) to 68 mM (0.4%). According to Professor Clark, the minimum effective concentration of ethanol can be compared with a spoonful of alcohol added to a bath full of water, or with a bottle of beer diluted in 100 gallons (almost 400 liters) of water.
The mechanisms underlying the described phenomenon are unclear. The absence of signs of growth and maturation of larvae (transition to the L2 stage) excludes the use of ethanol as a food product. However, chromatographic analysis of fatty acids and proteins that make up the body of larvae, in the culture medium of which ethanol containing atoms of the heavy isotope of hydrogen – deuterium was added, showed that the larvae still absorb and assimilate a small amount of alcohol.
The researchers suggest that the effect on the lifespan of larvae exerted by negligibly small doses of ethanol is due to a combination of two mechanisms: the assimilation of this compound and the stress reaction developing in response to its effects. Currently, they have already begun work on confirming (or refuting) this hypothesis.
The data obtained raise the question of the benefits of small concentrations of ethanol for human health, but do not answer it. To date, it is unclear whether the demonstrated phenomenon has anything in common with the known positive effect of moderate consumption of alcoholic beverages on the state of the cardiovascular system.
According to Clark, since about half of the genes of C.elegans have analogues in the human genome, scientists may be able to identify the gene responsible for increasing the lifespan of worm larvae. It is possible that these data will find their application in the study of the mechanisms of human aging.
Article by Paola V. Castro et al. Caenorhabditis elegans Battling Starvation Stress: Low Levels of Ethanol Prolonged Lifespan in L1 Larvae is published in the journal PLoS ONE.
Evgeniya Ryabtseva
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru based on UCLA materials:
Tiny amounts of alcohol dramatically extend a worm's life, but why?24.01.2012