McCall McPherson explains how biological age differs from chronological age: your genes and environment determine how fast you actually age, not just the years on your birth certificate. Lab interventions like medications and gene therapy show promise in slowing the process.
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I wanted you to tell me a little bit about the concept of biological aging. How does it differ from what we think of as age? And give us a little, any, any foundational aspects that you think are important.
Right now. At least biological aging really is more of a concept than something that we can measure with any level of precision. And I think again, we can talk more about what I mean by that, but conceptually, I think most of us understand that different people seem to age at different rates. And so there's this, this differentiation between chronological age, which is just passage of time, number of birthdays. If you think about your dog, your three year old poodle is that's three human years, right? Chronologically. But your three year old poodle is biologically more like 20 or 25 in human biological age. This is an aging process that is biological in nature, meaning it is controlled by genes and environment and that it's different in different people or different animals. Science of studying that biology of aging has matured a lot in the last two to three decades. We understand something about how that biology works, what the genes are that are involved, and excitingly, how to manipulate that in the laboratory, using medications or gene therapy to slow the biological aging process.
