It sounds like something that could be the title of a sci-fi novel, but it’s not fiction. British scientists have just discovered a species of worm that could potentially never age.
Known as flatworms, or planarian worms, these guys can overcome the process of aging, making them possibly immortal. According to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal, these worms can continuously maintain the length of a crucial part of their DNA during a restorative process in their bodies.
This part of their DNA is called the telomeres. Key factors associated with aging cells is in the length of the telomere , where long telomeres show that aging is slower, while shorter ones indicate faster aging.
So, there’s a worm that could maybe not age. What does this mean?
Research leader Aziz Aboobaker said that their data can help them make predictions about what it would take for an animal to live forever. Now, they’re going to take what they’ve learned about the flatworm and use it to better understand how to evolve animals to be immortal… humans included. The whole thing opens opportunities to study age-related characteristics in human cells.
So there you have it. That Justin Timberlake movie, IN TIME, may not be so far off from being true!