Has This Scientist Found the Fountain of Youth?
The black mouse on the screen sprawls on its belly, back hunched, blinking but otherwise motionless. Its organs are failing. It appears to be days away from death. It has progeria, a disease of accelerated aging, caused by a genetic mutation. It is only three months old.I am in the laboratory of Juan Carlos Izpisa Belmonte, a Spaniard who works at the Gene Expression Laboratory at San Diego's Salk Institute for Biological Studies, and who next shows me something hard to believe.