Linda Partridge
The Life Scientific
BBC
4.6 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 28 May 2013
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Will we ever be able to escape the diseases of old age?
That's the aim of today's guest, Prof Dame Linda Partridge who studies the genetics of ageing. From fruit flies to nematode worms, she uses simple organisms to unmask the secret processes that cause our bodies to deteriorate as we get older.
But her route into science was far from normal - growing up in a Catholic convent boarding school, the girls were encouraged to be good housewives rather than diligent scientists. However, the lack of science facilities and teachers meant that the students had to run their own laboratory, ordering chemicals and tending to equipment.
It was the start of a long and successful career, which has culminated in Linda becoming the Founding Director of the Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing in Germany and the Institute of Healthy Ageing at University College, London.
Her life's goal is to produce pharmacological treatments that will help people stay healthier in old age. But what are the social and economic impacts of our growing longevity?
Producer: Michelle Martin.
Transcript
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| 0:06.0 | What happens if the person you trust with your future isn't what you think they are? |
| 0:10.0 | I did feel the whole time he was watching me Yeti. I saw a footprint and that really gave me gusmas. |
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| 0:27.0 | Listen on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:29.0 | Thank you for downloading The Life Scientific from BBC Radio 4. |
| 0:34.0 | Who wants to live forever? |
| 0:36.0 | Now immortality may or may not appeal, |
| 0:39.0 | but all of us would like to enjoy a healthier life in old age. My guest today |
| 0:44.1 | professor named Linda Partridge studies the genetics of aging with the hope that |
| 0:48.8 | one day she can slow it down. Aging is one of the biggest mysteries in science and it's defeated biologists |
| 0:54.7 | over the past century. Despite being inevitable and inescapable, we still don't really |
| 1:00.2 | know what makes our bodies deteriorate as we grow older. |
| 1:04.0 | But rather than enlisting volunteers from her local retirement home, |
| 1:08.0 | Linda's experimental subjects are more likely to be found dropping into your pint glass in summer. |
| 1:13.0 | Fruit flies or drosophila are just one of the species she uses to uncover the secret mechanisms that |
| 1:19.7 | underlie the ageing process. |
| 1:22.3 | The ultimate aim is to produce pharmacological treatments that could |
| 1:26.0 | keep us healthier for longer. Many scientists at this stage in a long and |
| 1:30.7 | successful career might think of slowing down but there's no sign of that for |
| 1:34.6 | Linda Partridge. |
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