Mutant models of prolonged life span.

Aging is an important biological process that affects all creatures. For humans, age-related diseases and the question of why we age and die also have tremendous social and philosophical impact. We can therefore expect that models to study mechanisms of the aging process will always attract much interest. Until recently, the mutant model approach to study molecular mechanisms of aging has been limited to lower animals such as yeast, worms, and flies. However, given the current power of genetic technology in mammals, we can expect that phenotypes of prolonged life span will increasingly be seen in mice and subject to evaluation by pathologists. A brief review of current models is presented.