John Hemming's Web Log

I recently attended the British Society for Research on Aging annual scientific conference which was held this year in Birmingham. There were a number of interesting talks and about 45 posters were presented. This included one from me. The details in that poster can be seen on this link . One benefit of conferences which are in person is that conversations can continue after the presentations and issues can be refined through discussions either in the corridors or over food. The area I am particularly interested in is how the links between mitochondrial efficiency and the genome operate. I managed to refine my understanding of two of the aspects here. The Citric Acid Bicycle The first area I managed to refine is to understand the mechanisms that underpin citrate efflux from the mitochondria. To understand this fully it is perhaps best to consider the operation of two citric acid cycles. In fact realistically it is a Citric Acid Bicycle - as the two cycles are linked. Th

Trudiagnostic have changed the way they handle the Rejuvenation Olympics Leaderboard algorithm. The result of this initially was that I was globally no 40 and have now dropped to 44. Trudiagnostic are a US company that get samples of blood and they look at the DNA to see which parts of the DNA have methyl groups (CH3) attached to them. These modifications to DNA are called methylation markers. DunedinPACE is an algorithm which uses DNA methylation markers in white blood cells to work out how quickly or slowly someone is aging. I had three results on this. The odd thing about the results was that whilst my epigenetic age calculated from the same methylation markers was going down, the speed at which I was aging was going up. I find this somewhat counterintuitive. It is, however, I think relevant that in a global contest my approach on biochemistry which is quite different to many other people's does seem to keep up with others working in the same area. To that extent it

Why are babies born young? This sounds like an odd question. People would say "of course babies are born young". However, this goes to the core of the question of human (or animal) development. Why is it that as time passes people develop initially through puberty and then for women through menopause and more generally getting diseases such as sarcopenia, osteoporosis, diabetes and cancer, but most of the time babies start showing no signs of this. Lots of research into this has happened over the years and now I think it is clear why this is. It raises some interesting questions. Biological youth is about how well a cell functions. Cells that are old in a biological sense don't work that well. One of the ways in which cells stop working is they fail to produce the full range of proteins. Generally the proteins that are produced from longer genes stop being produced. The reason for this relates to how the Genes work (the Genome). Because the genome is not gettin

Now this might seem an odd suggestion. However, if you are starting Rapamycin I think you should first photograph your nails. That is because Rapamycin affects the growth of many people's fingernails and you may wish to titrate your usage of Rapamycin by how you see the effects on your nails. Rapamycin is known as an mTOR inhibitor. mTOR is a kinase in each cell that passes signals around relating to cell growth. If mTOR is activated then there is plenty of nutrients and so the cell can get on with building things. If mTOR is inactive it means nutrients are scarce and the cell needs to start recycling things to make them more efficient. Hence inhibiting mTOR (through the use of Rapamycin or fasting) can get the cell to start the process of autophagy The particular aspect of autophagy that is very useful is mitophagy where the cell starts recycling mitochondria. The less efficient mitochondria have a lower MMP (Mitochondrial Membrane Potential) {normally} and the cell auto

Space Medicine Expert Dr Rawan Al Shammari has joined the “Biohacking to improve everyone’s health” XPrize healthspan team headed up by John Hemming who was previously a Member of Parliament, in the UK. Oxford Visiting Professor Dr Richard Siow has also joined the team as the academic advisor. XPrize healthspan is a USD $ 101 Million contest organised by the XPrize foundation as a global contest to see which teams can improve human health by the equivalent of 10-20 years in the three areas of cognition, frailty and immune system. John Hemming is an erstwhile Liberal Democrat Member of Parliament who has successfully run a number of businesses and who has created the “Biohacking to improve everyone’s health” team as part of the XPrize. Dr Rawan Al Shammari is a medical doctor who specialises in Space Medicine. She has been appointed as the medical advisor to the team. Dr Siow has also joined the team as the academic advisor. The team is working to develop a protocol which improve

The concept of an Epigenetic Clock has been around for some time. The idea is that there are markers on DNA from which it is possible to work out someone's biological age. The idea of "biological age" is that it is in essence a measurement of how healthy someone is. People with the same chronological age, but different biological ages differ in their health status. My own personal view is that in fact the overall health of an individual is a driven by the status of all of the cells. Hence one person can have a particularly unhealthy pancreas whilst another person has a particularly unhealthy kidney. However, the idea of a biological age is useful to the extent that it is an easy concept to understand even if realistically it is an oversimplification. There is then the idea that if you can reduce someone's biological age that means improving their health status. This is a good approach in the sense that we ideally would be trying to ensure people are so health