Human beings have spent our entire lives trying to find a way to fight the unstoppable process of aging. Now, a team of researchers from Duke University (USA) has found an organism, barely a millimeter in length, that is capable of doing so: stop aging and thus double its life expectancy . The discovery has been published in the journal Plos Genetics .
The organism in question is Caenorhabditis Elegans , a nematode like the well-known Anisakis and scientists have discovered that in the absence of food, it can enter a state that allows it to stop its development . The body can keep moving even though its cells are apparently frozen, thus hampering the aging process.
This process is reversed when the organism has food again , since then, it resumes its normal development, although with the addition of having increased its life expectancy. This process can lead to doubling your originally stipulated life expectancy.
The researchers hope to find some way, in the future, to replicate this successful anti-aging technique, but above all, they affirm that it could be a good tool for the treatment of cancer since, “one of the great mysteries of cancer is how its cells can hibernate in the body for years before coming back to life. I think the processes in nematodes that induce their cells to hibernate and then wake them up could be the same as in metastasis, ”says David Sherwood, leader of the study.
