It sounds like science fiction.

Bacteria in a vial of dirt taken from a mysterious island create a compound that prolongs life.

And not just in the traditional medical sense, thanks to advances in modern medicine,

we're living longer lives, but we're doing so by lengthening the morbidity phase.

In other words, we're living longer but sicker lives.

Traditional medical approaches tend to just increase the number of old people in bad health.

Ideally, though, we'd extend lifespan by slowing aging. That way, we could

delay the onset of deterioration rather than just extend the period of deterioration. That's exactly

what this new compound appeared to do. Researchers called it rapamycin, named after the

bacteria's home, the mystical

Easter Island famed for its rock-carved figures, which is known locally as rapinewy.

Rapamycin inhibits an enzyme that's come to be known as mTOR, or mechanistic target of rapamycin,

a key modulator of aging characterized as a master determinant of lifespan

in aging. What does the enzyme mTOR actually do? It's the major regulator of growth in animals.

Activation of mTOR drives increases in both cell size and cell number. What's wrong with that?

The action of mTOR has been described as the engine of a speeding car without brakes. In this analogy, aging is a hurtling car that enters the low-speed zone of adulthood

and damages itself because it does not and cannot slow down.

We are over the hill and picking up speed.

Why don't living organisms have breaks?

Because they've never needed them.

In the wild, animals often don't live long enough to experience aging.

Most animals die before they even reach adulthood. The same used to be true for humans. Due to early age mortality, in the 17th century, most Londoners didn't even

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