Scientists Looking at DNA for Secret of Longevity

Most of us want to live a long healthy life. But just how long is healthy? As we go along in the 21st century, science and medicine has enabled us to lengthen our lives. Many more people are living to, and past the century mark. How do those people do it? Is it in their gene's, or is it that science is getting that good at extending our lives?

Scientists are working on finding out. The X Prize Foundation is offering a whopping ten million dollar prize for any scientist who can decipher the DNA code of a person one hundred years old, or older, to find out how people live to so old, and healthy too. They already have a few volunteers for the project, they are looking for more.

George Eberhardt, who is 107, from New Jersey taught and even played tennis till he was ninety-four. He says he's interested in technology and was one the first to volunteer. Scientists don't think his gene's will tell much, as George is the only one in his family to make to a hundred years old. But George thinks it's the seventy plus years married, intense interest in a lot of different things in his life. But the researchers think it's more than that.

Dr Nir Barzilia of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, studied one such group on his own. He's group were less than perfect subjects. Many were obese, had smoked for years, not many exercised daily and still, they were a hundred years old and older.

The oldest member of this study group died just a couple months before her 110th birthday. she smoke for most of her life. she had genes that protected her from her environment. Her sister lived to 102, and her brother who is 105, still is able to manage his hedge fund. The researchers say, it's just not the gene's they're looking at, but other thing's within the DNA that make up the ability to live so long.

The researchers also added, there's been so much study and research into the disorders and diseases of old age, that nobody really knows why some people live past a hundred, and some don't. We have the technology and tools to find out now." says Dr Eric Topol.