January 20th, 2006
TOR Signaling and Calorie Restriction
The researchers working on thousands of strains of gene-engineered yeast in order to understand metabolism and longevity are turning up some interesting science: "We developed a high-throughput assay to determine [life span] for approximately 4800 single-gene deletion strains of yeast, and identified long-lived strains carrying mutations in the conserved TOR pathway. TOR signaling regulates multiple cellular processes in response to nutrients, especially amino acids, raising the possibility that decreased TOR signaling mediates life span extension by calorie restriction." Scientists are turning up all sorts of places to be looking for the biochemical mechanisms of longevity through calorie restriction.