Every year, California strawberry growers spend millions of dollars trying to kill nematodes — tiny hermaphroditic earthworms so small as to be almost invisible — that feed on, among other things, the root stems of the state’s lucrative strawberry crop. And every year, California molecular biologist and geneticists working to slow down the aging process spend millions of dollars on research projects that rely upon the humble nematode — the first totally genetically decoded creature on the planet — as their equivalent of the lab rat.
According to Professor Joel Rothman, a molecular biologist at UCSB, geneticists have already figured out how to tweak the nematode’s genetic sequencing to extend the creature’s life expectancy by no less 600 percent. “In human terms, an increase like that would allow us to live 500 years,” he said. Rothman — with 26 years at UCSB under his belt — is now one of the driving forces behind the campus’s almost brand-new Center for Aging and Longevity Studies, which is making its grand public debut this week with a Thursday-evening event at the Music Academy.
Headlining that event is the microbiologist who first cracked the genetic code that controls the aging process in nematodes, Cynthia Kenyon. In the early ’90s, Kenyon, then a professor at UC San Francisco, figured out how to double the lifespan of an average nematode — from two weeks to four — by making just one genetic change. When Google decided to jump into the anti-aging business with the creation of the California Life Company (CALICO) in 2016, one of the first people it hired was Kenyon, who now serves as CALICO’s vice president of aging research.