…through RNA interference:

In monkeys, a single injection of a drug to induce RNA interference against PCSK9 lowered levels of bad cholesterol by about 60 percent, an effect that lasted up to three weeks. Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, the biotechnology company that developed the drug, hopes to begin testing it in people next year.

The drug is a practical application of scientific discoveries that are showing that RNA, once considered a mere messenger boy for DNA, actually helps to run the show. The classic, protein-making genes are still there on the double helix, but RNA seems to play a powerful role in how genes function.

“This is potentially the biggest change in our understanding of biology since the discovery of the double helix,” said John S. Mattick, a professor of molecular biology at the University of Queensland in Australia.

Of course, as the article points out, there’s still a lot we don’t know, and there are likely to be unforeseen side effects until we understand how this all works much better. But this is a breakthrough in itself.

[Update a few minutes later]

Here’s an interesting article on how far genetics has come in the ninety-nine years since the word “gene” was coined.

[via Derbyshire, who has other thoughts]

A new drug that is a thousand times more powerful than resveratrol:

In the study, scientists fed the mice a high-fat, high-calorie diet mixed with doses of SRT1720 for approximately 10 weeks. The mice were given 100 or 500 milligrams of fat per kilogram of body weight each day (a high dose even for humans). The mice did not exercise regularly, although the scientists tested the animals’ exercise capacity, or endurance, by making them run on a treadmill. “The mice treated with the compound ran significantly longer,” says Auwerx. The drug also protected the animals from the negative effects of high-calorie diets: metabolic disorders, obesity-related diseases, and insulin resistance. It even improved the mice’s cholesterol.

It is significant that the drug mimics the effects of a calorie-restricted diet, since this has previously been tied to increased life expectancy, says William Evans, a professor of geriatric medicine, nutrition, and physiology at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.

It’s as if the couch-potato mice underwent a strict diet and exercise regime, says David Sinclair, a biologist at Harvard Medical School, in Boston, who is one of the cofounders of Sirtris but was not involved in the current study. The new study “is a major step forward, showing that we can design and synthesize potent, druglike molecules that could slow down the aging process,” says Sinclair.

I think that people are going to be amazed at the life-extension and health advances coming along in the next few years. It makes it all the more the shame that we continue to lose people who we might save if they could just hang on long enough.

A cure for nut allergies?

Well, actually, it’s only for peanuts, though for peanut-allergy sufferers (who seem to be sufficiently legion that it’s affecting the lifestyle of the rest of us on airplanes and other places), that’s a good thing.

I’m allergic to tree nuts, not peanuts (which are not true nuts, but legumes, like beans). And it caused me no little amount of grief when I was a kid, because the allergy was just unpleasant, not life threatening, so my parents wouldn’t believe me. Part of the problem was that because I was truly allergic to cashews, walnuts, etc., I assumed that I was also allergic to peanuts. But I ate peanut butter with no problem, so my parents assumed that I was faking, and made me eat not just the peanuts but all the nuts, which would result in a swelling and itching of the mucous membranes in my mouth and throat, and a slight but vague stomach upset. But because it never resulted in a trip to the hospital, they never believed that I was allergic, and tormented me throughout my childhood until I left the house and took control over my own diet, at which point, being rational, I realized that if I could eat peanut butter I could eat peanuts as well. And I do.

Anyway, I hope that progress on this front continues, not because I think that I’ve been missing anything great from the other nuts, but because I will be able to eat foods (particularly Indian food, which seems to be kind of sneaky in this regard) without worrying about unpleasant consequences. And even more for those for whom the consequences go far beyond “unpleasant.”