Word: clocked
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...monumental stuff. If human tissue behaved in the body the same way it did in the dish, they felt, it meant that somewhere in the nanoviscera of each cell there was an actuarial hourglass that gave it only so much time to live and no more. If the clock could be found--and, more important, reset--both the cells and the larger corpus that gave rise to them might be made immortal. Of course, hypothesizing the existence of such a cellular timekeeper was one thing; finding it and manipulating it were something else again. In the years since, senescence scientists...
After locating three other nematode clock genes, Hekimi went looking for similar ones in people. He found one whose amino acid schematic nearly mirrored Clock-1's. "The Clock-1 genes in the two species are so very similar," he says, "that it's possible the whole clock system works the same way. If we find all of the human clock genes, we can perhaps slow them down just a little, so we can extend life...
...long-lived nematodes have helped expose a few of them. Hekimi created his little uberworms by crossing and recrossing individuals that lived longer naturally, slowly extending the life-spans of later generations. He then searched the animals' chromosomes until he found the mutated gene responsible, a gene he dubbed Clock-1. "The Clock-1 gene is critical in setting life-span," Hekimi says. "More important, with cloning and genetic mapping, we were able to determine just which protein the gene created to get that job done...
...facing any scientist trying to find a genetic lever on the aging process is the sheer number of genes involved. Geneticist George Martin at the University of Washington in Seattle, who was involved in the discovery of the Werner's gene, believes that even if only a few master-clock genes directly guide aging in humans, up to 7,000 more might be peripherally involved. Re-engineering even one of these is an exquisitely complex process. Re-engineering all 7,000 would be impossible...
...broadcast networks, however, are all too aware of what Everett is missing, and they are desperate to do something about it. Distracted by home videos, computer games and round-the-clock cable channels such as Disney, the Cartoon Network and most significantly of all, Nickelodeon, children have abandoned traditional Saturday-morning television like so many grownups shunning whole milk. For the first six weeks of the new season, on average 4.16 million kids 2 to 11 years old tuned into Saturday-morning network shows, down 20% from last season, according to Nielsen Media Research, and a whopping 60% from...