Scientists have de-aged mice in experiments that challenge scientific belief

Researchers from Harvard University carried out experiments on a group of mice into how the process can be manipulated.

David Sinclair is a professor of genetics in the Blavatnik Institute at Harvard Medical School and codirector of the Paul F. Glenn Center for Biology of Aging Research

He says that the human body has ‘a backup copy of our youth that can be triggered to regenerate’.

And his team’s research into the topic may have found a way to do just that.

While it’s often been assumed that aging is the result of genetic mutations that cause our bodies to deteriorate and die, Sinclair and his team believe that’s not the case.

He says: “We believe it’s a loss of information — a loss in the cell’s ability to read its original DNA so it forgets how to function — in much the same way an old computer may develop corrupted software.

“I call it the information theory of aging.”

According to Sinclair, while DNA is the hardware, something called epigenomes are the software, and have the capability of turning genes on and off.

“The astonishing finding is that there’s a backup copy of the software in the body that you can reset,” he explained.

“We’re showing why that software gets corrupted and how we can reboot the system by tapping into a reset switch that restores the cell’s ability to read the genome correctly again, as if it was young.