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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
@AOC
Funny enough, one of the compounds I tested yielded unusually promising results for cellular health + C. elegan lifespan extension.
When I tried to find out why the compound wasn’t pursued more, one of the explanations given to me was that pharma lobbyists worked against it.
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Justin Benavidez
@himynameisjbenz
in case you didn't know already, @Ocasio2018 won 2nd place in the 2007 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair for a poster about C. elegans. props for choosing the best model organism
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7:15 PM - Nov 30, 2018
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Biogerontology. 2010 Feb;11(1):17-30. doi: 10.1007/s10522-009-9223-5. Epub 2009 Apr 7.
Ageing in nematodes: do antioxidants extend lifespan in Caenorhabditis elegans?
Pun PB1, Gruber J, Tang SY, Schaffer S, Ong RL, Fong S, Ng LF, Cheah I, Halliwell B.
Abstract
Antioxidants are often investigated as a promising strategy for extending lifespan. Accordingly, there is significant interest in novel antioxidant compounds derived from natural sources such as plant extracts. However, because lifespan studies are laborious and expensive to conduct, candidate compounds are frequently selected based simply on their in vitro antioxidant efficacy, with the implicit assumption that in vitro antioxidants are also in vivo antioxidants, and that in vivo antioxidants will decrease functionally relevant oxidative damage and thereby extend lifespan. We investigated the validity of these assumptions in the model organism, Caenorhabditis elegans. Nematodes were exposed to 6 plant extracts, selected out of a total of 34 based on a simple in vitro antioxidant assay. We found no correlation between in vitro and in vivo antioxidant capacities. Antioxidant efficacies were also not predictive of lifespan benefits. Further studies into those extracts that produced significant lifespan extension indicated that a direct antioxidant effect is unlikely to be the main factor responsible for the modulation of nematode lifespan.