May 10, 2013
On her 105th birthday, Dominguita Velasco danced so long that her worried family asked her to sit down. When she turned 111, she had a party with friends and family and blew out the blaze of candles on her cake. Never far from her daughter, grandson and great grandchildren and always involved in her Oakland [...]
February 16, 2012
By David Hinds, Chuong Do, and Shirley Wu In January we wrote about the challenging search for genetic influences on human longevity, touching on two of the most recent studies as examples of how elusive solid findings have been. Because one of these studies was a new version of a paper that was previously [...]
January 26, 2012
With analytical contributions from 23andMe Scientist David Hinds For all human history people have been obsessed with their own mortality. Early explorers searched the globe for the mythical “fountain of youth,” and now scientists are turning that exploration inward to look at the genomes of people [...]
July 22, 2011
Last summer, a study published in the journal Science on the genetics of human longevity made a splash when the authors claimed that they had identified a genetic signature that could predict with 77% accuracy whether someone would live past 100. The bold findings immediately came under fire from other [...]
July 7, 2010
[Update: This study was formally retracted by Science on July 22, 2011] A genome-wide association study of extreme longevity published last week in the journal Science has been receiving a lot of press attention. The results are quite extraordinary: the authors identify 70 loci with genome-wide [...]
December 10, 2009
From alchemists and the Philosopher's Stone to Ponce de Leon and the Fountain of Youth, history is full of stories of people searching for a way to extend life indefinitely. In recent years, discoveries about the biology of aging have brought us closer to that dream than ever before. Now 23andMe is asking [...]
February 2, 2009
SNPwatch gives you the latest news about research linking various traits and conditions to individual genetic variations. These studies are exciting because they offer a glimpse into how genetics may affect our bodies and health; but in most cases, more work is needed before this research can provide [...]
