Lecture Genes, Phenes, and Dreams of Immortality: The 2003 Kleemeier Award Lecture

applied genetic analyses to the study of the aging processes in Caenorhabditis elegans and who introduced the nematode as an aging model. Longer life span was chosen as a surrogate marker for slowed aging. Here Dr. Johnson describes his role(s) in the isolation of age-1, the first longevity mutant, which can more than double the life span and which slows the rate of aging more than twofold. He also reviews research suggesting conservation of function and applicability to intervention by pharmacological targeting of the Age-1 pathway. Current work by biotechnology companies targets this and other basic discoveries in an attempt to postpone human aging. F IRST, I would like to introduce you to the meaningunderlying the title of this year’s talk. This title is presented a little bit tongue-in-cheek. For most of you who are not geneticists, a ‘‘phene’ ’ is actually not a real word, but I needed to make it for the rhyming meter. So instead of phene, think phenotype, or what a gene creates in the real world, what the organism looks like. In looking back through prior Kleemeier Lectures, I decided that this talk should be, and will be, a descriptio