A SMALL body may mean a long life, say geneticists in Europe and the US. But
it’s not being small itself that makes you live longer. Rather, it seems that
key genes controlling growth and metabolism can also have a dramatic effect on
lifespan.
One team led by Marc Tatar at Brown University in Rhode Island studied flies
with mutations in INR, the fly equivalent of the receptor for insulin and
insulin-related growth factor (IGF-I) in mammals. Mutations in these genes in
worms can triple adult lifespan, and the team wanted to see if the same was true
of flies.…
