Every living organism ages and eventually dies. Even though this seems to be a basic truth, researchers have had a hard time picking out the cause of aging in any animal.
Now, thanks to research done at Johns Hopkins Medical Institute, researchers believe a gene named klotho is at least partially responsible for aging in humans and other animals.
In 1997, a group of Japanese researchers accidentally deactivated the gene in a group of mice. The mice seemed healthy at birth, but died only two months later, suffering from diseases including infertility, emphysema and low bone mass.
Researchers at Johns Hopkins looked at the same gene in young people as well as old and found that there was significantly more variation in the gene in the elderly population than in the youths.
As the gene expression changes throughout life, they often resulting in a variant form of the nessesary protein. As a result, the gene is less advantageous than it was previously, and leads to the debilitating effects of aging and eventually leads to death.
