Lifespans could very soon begin to rocket upwards beyond three-digit numbers.
Secondo david agus e Craig Venter we are on the eve of an extraordinary medical revolution: Agus, Professor of Medicine at the University of Southern California, stated very precisely than the average lifespan it will settle very soon at around 100 years. Craig Venter, co-founder and head of Human Longevity inc. he raises by affirming that there is no limit to the years we could live, except for the capacity of our planet to support too many human beings.
The miracle? Big Data
A substantial part of this medical revolution is attributed by the two scientists to a important advancement on the border between medicine and technology: Big Data, the ability to collect and index an enormous amount of information with the possibility of evaluating its effects even in real time. Venter sequenced the human genome just 15 years ago, and when it happened there was no comparison: today we also know other data relating to species other than ours, and we know we are different by only 3% compared to the 3,2 billion pairs of bases that compose the DNA.
Just 10 years ago, Venter would never have predicted that we would be able to predict an individual's maximum age based on the study of their genetic code. Today we know that man begins to lose Y chromosomes between the ages of 40 and 50.
To help Big Data make medicine make the leap we expect, Venter and his team have hired the engineer who developed the Google Translate translation system. “We're trying to build a system that can learn as it collects data. The first application is terrific: we will be able to obtain the photograph of a subject starting from its genetic code".
“We learn new and incredible things at breakneck speed: every six months we have to review many of our systems. We will probably never fully understand the functioning mechanisms linked to diseases and aging, but we don't need to fully understand them to control them".
