Far more progress might be made by targeting longevitygenes to develop multipronged drugs aimed at diabetes, Alzheimer's, cancer and other age-related maladies.
Longevitygenes appear to slow down the aging process by making cells and tissues more stress-resistant, better able to withstand the inevitable environmental insults that accumulate over a lifetime from bad diet, inflammation, radiation, genetic mutations and toxic chemical by-products called free radicals.
But researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York have pinpointed one reason for Tauber's longevity: her DNA. Examining the genes of Tauber and 350 other Ashkenazi Jews who are nearing age 100, Nir Barzilai and his colleagues have identified three genes that appear to promote long life by protecting against the diseases of old age.