Snail study may explain ageing

The snail might be able to teach humans how to live longer. Researchers are studying age-related changes in its brain as a way to understand why we grow old and why mental faculties decline.

Scientists have had a longstanding interest in how and why we age. Dr Richard Faragher of the British Society for Research on Ageing yesterday discussed a number of studies of the ageing process including one of garden snails.

Dr Faragher told the British Association Festival of Science that snails were useful for a number of reasons, most particularly because their brain has been widely studied. "It is one of the very few creatures for which we have a circuit diagram for the brain," Dr Faragher said.

Its brain changed with age, he said, which in turn caused alterations in the snail's feeding activity, causing it to munch through plants much more slowly. A research team from the University of Brighton is attempting to reverse these changes to see whether its feeding habits can be returned to those of a younger snail.

"What we are hoping is that by being able to correct a single circuit we will be able to correct much more complicated circuits," he said.

Dr Faragher mentioned another study which entailed trying to strengthen the immune systems of rodents. The disease-fighting systems of the body work less efficiently as we age. Damage-repair systems also begin to fail with advancing years, which means that it becomes more difficult for the body to keep up with cell damage caused by free reactive oxygen.

The project at the University of Manchester included studies of a new type of catalytic antioxidant, which unlike an antioxidant such as vitamin C, can continue to destroy free oxygen. What makes the new type different to the traditional antioxidant is that it acts as a catalyst, and regenerates each time it has broken down, Dr Faragher said.