Abstract

It is difficult to exaggerate the progress that has been made in biogerontology over the last 15 years. As with all scientific revolutions, a few experiments in a small number of laboratories have changed the way in which we think about and design experiments. As a result of these experiments, there is much evidence to suggest that a rudimentary understanding of some of the processes that cause aging will be available in the next decade. One particular area of progress is the molecular genetics of lifespan. Although one may draw some distinctions between chronological lifespan and normal aging, extended lifespan remains one of the best indicators that an intervention in an aging process has been made. The isolation of a long-lived variant of a laboratory invertebrate is now essentially a trivial project but the information obtained from this approach is proving invaluable. As with most other biological problems, the most important experimental developments are coming from studying simple organisms in a reductionist fashion.