From the Epic of Gilgamesh to alchemists’ quest to find the fabled philosopher’s stone, stories of perilous, yet ultimately fruitless, pursuits of immortality are ubiquitous. Even today, humanity seems determined to unlock the secrets of a long life. But now we look to science, not legend.
In Jellyfish Age Backwards, molecular biologist Nicklas Brendborg takes us on a whistle-stop tour of the science of ageing. We begin with a visit to a few of the many natural wonders that defy our ideas of ageing. These include the 400-year-old shark that roams the Greenland Sea and the species of tiny jellyfish, Turritopsis dohrnii, that can regress from adulthood back to infancy when stressed – fulfilling the book’s title.
Brendborg details the scientific gains in this field over recent decades. There is a biotech executive who successfully edited her own DNA in an attempt to prolong healthy cell function in 2015, and just this year, researchers managed to turn back the biological clock on human skin cells by exposing them to specialist molecules dubbed “Yamanaka factors”.
Exciting stuff, but anti-ageing science is in its infancy, with most discoveries Brendborg cites yet to be trialled in humans. Yet he navigates this bustling discipline with graceful clarity, dispelling common myths along the way – for example, intermittent fasting may not help you live longer.
While immortality may be too tall an order, Brendborg believes medical science will triumph, and a generation will be born that is “the last to be ravaged by ageing”.
