• Question: Responding to Dr. Allison Woollard's lecture on living forever do you think that the protens used or making naked mole rats live longer could be mimicked for humans?

    Asked by rochelle1999 on 27 Jan 2014.
    • Photo: Karolina Chocian

      Karolina Chocian answered on 27 Jan 2014:

      if they can, we have a long road in front of us. There might also not be just one reason why they live so long, recently an involvement of specific kind of ribosomes not found in an other mammals was discussed as well.
      I will read upon it and perhaps can answer your question in more detail :0

    • Photo: Alison Woollard

      Alison Woollard answered on 31 Jan 2014:

      The substance that seems to make the naked mole rats live longer is high molecular weight hyaluronic acid – a type of sugar made by cells. We don’t know if this will have any effect on humans, but scientists are certainly trying to work out why this substance has anti-cancer properties in the hopes of being able to use this knowledge in cancer research

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