'Hey, Gorge," called Matt from across the lab. "I think I've got it!"
"Yeah, but there's a cure for that now," I quipped. "Got what?"
"Well, you know that paper by Les Marc et al that causes such a stir last year, about the mechanism that explained how training by marathon runners provided a pressure to select muscle cells that died sooner under stress if they had old mitochondria and so in the 'long run' evolved cells that produced stronger mitochondria and improved endurance and so-on?"
"Yep, remember it. What about it?"
"I think it also explains why we all die of old age," Matt paused for effect. "And how to stop it."
I was stunned. "You mean you think we can cure old-age?" I definitely wanted there to be a "we" in that sentence, if this was something solid.
"Yep. I think that somewhere way back when, our cell line took a turn down an evolutionary path that was good for the genome at the time, but ended up with a limited lifespan for the individual. I'm pretty sure we can undo that." He pointed at his screen. "Simulations show that we can stop the developing cell from pursuing a strategy that selects for eventual death and just goes on forever."
"Cancer?" I queried, scurrying over to look at the sim results.
"Nope, no more than usual," Matt grinned. "Apoptosis occurs if needed. It's just the aging by loss of telomeres and a few other degenerative mechanisms that get halted." He pointed out one graph. "This shows that if I repress a few key gene expressions, cells produced from adult cells by mitosis are at least as good at dividing forever as pluripotent stem cells, even though they remain specialized."
"Animal cell trials? Ethics?" I referred to the form of hellish torment that one would have to go through to get a request to perform even in-vitro animal trials past the Ethics Committee.
"No need," Matt grinned smugly. "Already covered by the last round of meetings. I slipped in a few things that no-one noticed. We can start as soon as I get the sequencer programmed."
"Nice!" I slapped him on the back. "I wondered what those extra vaguely worded experiments were all about," I lied. I had no idea what extras he'd put in the last request. I'd have to check. Was supposed to be my responsibility, in fact. But everybody did it, who could get away with it. Ethics was such a pain in the arse. Always worried that some new synthetic plague would get out of the lab. As if.