| Discovering lifespan extension drugs by screening for stress resistanceLong-lived organisms tend to be resistant to many types of stress, whereas short-lived organisms tend to be stress sensitive. This allows us to screen for longevity mutants by looking for stress resistance rather than long life. The same logic ought to apply to small-molecule drugs: Any compound that increases stress resistance has an improved change of extending lifespan. That hypothesis has been operationally tested by the Lithgow lab, who performed a small-scale screen of antioxidant compounds and looked for molecules that increased thermotolerance in the worm C. elegans. Several of these drugs also increased lifespan. |
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