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American Morning

Chromosome Four May be Ticket to Long Life

Aired August 27, 2001 - 11:05   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: We know so many of you out there want to live long enough to blow out 100 candles some day? Well, if you want to do that, chromosome four is the ticket. Researchers have found a handful of genes that just may program us to live well into our 90s or 100s. Now, they've just got to figure out which specific genes can make us centenarians.

Our CNN technology correspondent Ann Kellan is here to give us some more information on all of that.

ANN KELLAN, CNN TECHNOLOGY CORRESPONDENT: Isn't it interesting? We've always wondered if it was our genes or our life style that kept us from living a long time. And I think what these Harvard researchers really wanted to know is, is it genes? And if it is, let's people who've lived a really long-time and see what it is about their genes that has let them live that long.

So they took 137 sibling pairs. One had to be 98 years old, and the other one were between 91 and 109, so we're talking a group of older people, and then they compared, they mapped their genes. They said, what is it? What's similar about their genes? And they found, like you mentioned, chromosome four. They looked at all the genes and they targeted something on chromosome four. They very similar. All of them similarities in chromosome four. Now there's hundreds, even thousands of genes on chromosome four, so now they have to go in and look at the genes and figure out what they do. Do help you fight disease? Do help you fend off the environment? Or do they let you eat fat, and do all these kinds of things that bad for your health and still live to be this age? They don't really know yet how these genes work. Or you could just let your cells live longer. They could say age more slowly than other people.

So that is what we're looking at now, and they're trying to figure out, so it's going to be a long process.

HARRIS: Now in the process, do you think they're going to find out that there is some sort of upward limit beyond which humans could never live, despite whatever powers we may find in this chromosome four?

KELLAN: You know, we are entering such an exciting time now. I don't think they know that at this point. They say that they're looking at people who are living 20 years longer than the average lifespan. But now with gene therapy, and the things that they can possibly do with genetic information, I don't think they know, and I think they're going to be doing animal studies on this to see. They studied the fruit fly, and they found if they alter fruit fly genes, the fruit fly lived longer. How much longer, we don't know.

HARRIS: How much longer before we see a grandson and his grandfather both want the get new dentures.

KELLAN: I'm sure it's already happening.

HARRIS: For other reasons.

Thanks, Ann Kellan, talk to you later.

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