Monday, October 12, 2009

First step in the treatment of mitochondrial disorders, reversing biological aging and towards improved energy management in higher mammals

This is an executive summary of concepts that I have slowly been thinking about for over 20 years but which congealed in my mind's eye, while deployed to the war and were finalized on April 12, 2003.

Because we are, like all other life on this planet, dependant on energy, the mechanisms for energy management that we have intrinsically in place are of paramount importance to our longevity.

Just like the experiments which show that younger individual’s internal time-keeping mechanisms run slightly faster and correlate to measures of overall biological age (not chronological age) of their brains, the intrinsic ‘energy’ of life in older individuals is running out and our internal clock is slowing to a stop as the energy from our biological machinery is literally grinding to a halt.

All life expectancy across animal species on the planet is linear (small animals live fast and die quickly while larger animals live slower, have slower metabolisms and live longer) with only a handful of outliers – quite conspicuously all animals that actually fly (birds and the mammalian example: bats).

It seems that the higher power/energy requirements for flight have self-selected animals whose energy management systems are extremely efficient; made so by millions of years of evolutionary refinement and design.

Through the use of mitochondrial gene transfer we can not only treat a variety of known genetic defects currently causing the death and diminished quality of lives to millions of people world-wide, but also look forward to improving overall outcomes in many diseases not traditionally thought of as mitochondrially-based, like psychiatric diseases, heart disease, obesity and diabetes among many others.

Starting with mammal (chiroptera) mitochondria, we can then utilize molecular engineering techniques to incorporate and swap out human mitochondrial genes for the bat’s original mitochondrial genes, while maintaining the original membranes that give these animals the unique lower proton leakage that provide them with higher energy efficiency.

This would be one of many first steps necessary to provide for humans a longer life span in the context of better energy management and lower free radical production and leakage via more efficient mitochondria.

This is not science fiction but present day science-fact and would relieve unquantifiable amounts of human suffering and lead to the ultimate achievement of the human potential.

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