THE THREAD OF LIFE

hristmas seems to come around faster each year. And with it, the inevitable sensation that time is truly passing and – though we may be getting a little wiser – we are getting none the younger. Like it or not, we are stuck with life the way we are stuck with the prospect of death. We can trick the traces of the passage of time with plastic surgery but underneath, our bodies are ageing without mercy. How? And is it genetic? Environmental? Both? Neither? A child’s development into a full-grown adult bears a strong genetic component. It is not yet clear, though, whether the process of ‘just getting old’ does too – although a number of disorders which bring on premature ageing would suggest something of the like. A protein named Klotho, discovered by chance in the late 1990s, is helping to unveil the process involved in an individual’s longevity.