This did not make front page news nor would it be on any giant controversial billboard to stun motorists but science has recently found the gene for making you age more than your years. I found it in the Guardian online in a feature by Ian Sample last Feb. 4.
Looking at people of the same age, we sometimes notice that they seem to age differently. Some are much older than others because of the diseases they have which affects the way they look and behave. This observation has also not escaped scientists. They have also been puzzling as to why is it that medical problems usually associated with ageing like high blood pressure, heart disease are not only experienced by older people. They have always suspected that there are really people who biologically age much faster than others, even if they have lived the same number of years. Scientists guessed that there is a gene that accounts for this and they seem to have found it and it is in chromosome no. 3. It is next to the gene that makes an enzyme that accounts for the tail called telomeres which also marks how long you could possibly live.
I have written about telomeres sometime late last year. Telomeres are at the tails of your chromosomes which are widely described as “shoelaces” that fray as your cells divide which is what cells do as long as you are alive. Some people in their 90’s have long telomeres compared to the ones ten or twenty years younger. This is what made scientists suspect that telomeres have a lot to do with our longevity. It turns out that it is not just telomeres that account for long life but this gene they just found. In fact the study found that those with short telomeres also had a copy or two of this “ageing” gene. The study was led by Professor Nilesh Samani of the University of Leicester and was published in the journal Nature Genetics.
On top of the role of those “tails”, it is also now a question of having this gene or not and how many copies you inherited. Humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes. For the first 22 pairs, you get one copy from your mother and one from your father. In your 23rd pair, you either get an X from your Mom and another X from your Dad (if you are female) or a Y from your Dad (of you are male.) In the sample population they tested (3000), they found that in your chromosome no. 3, those who have one copy of the gene (38%) were biologically three to four years older than those who did not carry the sequence. Those who carried two copies of the genes (7%) were about six to seven biological years older. The rest of the sample population did not carry any copies of the gene.
There are of course environmental factors that account for people ageing much faster. Abuse (smoking, eating too much food with cholesterol) could make you age biologically faster. However, having this gene means that even if you are not extremely poor or abusive, you have an inborn tendency to age faster than someone who does not have the gene.
Scientists did not search for this gene to make those who carry it to sit on the corner of their lives and cry “we’re doomed, we’ll never make it” like one of those Lilliputians in the Gulliver series I watched when I was a kid. Scientists think that now they have found the gene, then medical science could intervene and get you to on a proactive track to combating the signs of ageing (cholesterol-lowering drugs) which may start visiting you in your twenties. I also think that with this finding, you can imbibe a healthier lifestyle as early as you can. If you have this gene or two copies of it, you are courting trouble and trouble is sure to say yes to you if you still smoke, not exercise, or have too much cholesterol in your diet. If longevity is a gift, then genetically, it seems that it is a gift that should be “empty” since it is not having a copy of the gene that will keep you from ageing faster. But until we could all be tested for the presence of this gene, I think it is good to assume we have it and not feed it with the habits already known to shorten life spans like those mentioned earlier.
We used to think that bodily aging was always tied to the number of years. With what science has found out about the role of telomeres and now this gene, it seems that ageing is not a straightforward matter even for our biology. For your next birthday cake, forget the candles. When they ask you how old you are, tell them you will first need to consult with your genes.
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