Cynthia Kenyon

It is unlikely that changes in telomeres are influencing the lifespan of the worm. That is because telomeres only shorten when cells divide. Most of the cells of the worm stop dividing when the worm becomes an adult. ”

It's like, say, if you were a dog. You notice that you're getting old, and you look at your human and you think, 'Why isn't this human getting old?'... But now we're the human looking out and imagining a different human. ”

The hope is that if we can increase youthfulness, we can postpone age-related diseases. ”

There are lots of different strategies that an animal can use to survive. What a worm does is try to convert food into worms as soon as possible. In three days a single worm produces 300 progeny. So why put your resources into developing if you can make a brand-new worm in no time at all? ”

One thing that's likely: How you look as you age is hereditary. Some of my family members, for example, look younger than their real age. And people have mistaken me for 30, even 25. ”

Ageing is very exciting. But if I didn't work on ageing, I'd want to work on the brain. There are really cool techniques you can use now. And bioinformatics. The methods you can use for comparing large data sets - that's so powerful. ”