laboratory breeding experiment doubles flies life-spans?

there was somthing i saw on the discovery channel a while back...
some scientist dudes took a bunch of flies and isolated them, so they couldn't reproduce at they're normal time in they're life cycle, i cant remember for how long the where isolated, but for arguments sake we'll say untill about twice the age at which they would normally reproduce.

they did this for a certain amount of generations (again i cant remember how many, but it wasnt a whole lot), and they effectivly doubled the life-span of these flies....

i dont have a link for any of this though, so if sombody knows what im talking about, and has a little more info on the subject, i would be very gratefull to hear it.

They isolated a gene, not the flies themselves. Here's more:

www.cnn.com...
www.advance.uconn.edu...

They called the gene "Indy" as in "I'm Not Dead Yet" in homage to Monty Python.

They remained sexually active longer, though. Perhaps thats what you were thinking of in terms of reproduction.


[edit on 5-9-2004 by RedBalloon]

thanks redbaloon, just what i was looking for

we are at the beggining of a genetic revolution. Given time for this technology to mature, a 200 year life span with 80 years in your prime may not be that far off.

itll take 3 times longer for us to evolve then

Yeah, it will be 500 - 600 years until humans never die (by natural causes).