共用题干 第三篇

Eat More, Weigh Less, Live Longer

Clever genetic detective work may have found out the reason why a near-starvation diet
prolonas the life of many animals.
Ronald Kahn at Harvard Medical School in Boston,U.S.,and his colleagues nave
been able to extend the lifespan（寿命）of mice by 18 per cent by blocking the rodent"s(啮
齿动物）increase of fat in specific cells.This suggests that thinness一and not necessarily
diet一Iromotes lonq life in"calorie（热量卡）restricted" animals.
"It"s very cool work",says aging researche:Cynthia Kenyon of the University ot
California, San Francisc."These mice eat all they want, lose weight and live longer.It"s
like heaven."
Calorie restriction dramatically extends the lifespan of organisms as different as worms
and rodents.Whether this works in humans is still unknown,partly because few people are
willina to submit to such a strict diet.
But many researchers hope they will be able to trigger the same effect with a drug once
they understand how less food leads to a longer life.One theory is that eating less reduces
the increase of harmful things that can damage cells.But Kahn"s team wondered whether
the animals simply benefit by becoming thin.
To find out, they used biology tricks to disrupt the insulin（胰岛素）receptor (受体)
gene in lab mice一but only in their fat cells."Since insulin is needed to help fat cells store
fat ,these animals were protected against becoming fat,"explains Kahn.
This slight genetic change in a single tissue had dramatic effects.By three months of
age.Kahn"s modified mice had up to 70 per cent less body fat than normal control mice,
despite the fact that they ate 55 per cent more food per gram of body weight.
In addition ,their lifespan increased.The average control mouse lived 753 days,while
the thin rodents averaged a lifespan of 887 days.After three years,all the control mice had
died.but one-quarter of the modified rodents were still alive.
"That they ciet these effects by just manipulating the fat cells is controversial,"says
Leonard Guarente of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,who studies calorie
restriction and aging.
But Guarente says Kahn has yet to prove that the same effect is responsible for
increased lifespan in calorie-restricted animals."It might be the same effect or there might
be two routes to long life,"he points out,"and that would be very interesting." What can be inferred from the passage about the route to long life?