H U E

he mysteries of what causes aging and how to extend life span are being tackled by applying evolving technologies to model organ-isms. The tiny roundworm Caenorhab-ditis elegans has been a powerhouse in this arena. A key breakthrough occurred in 1993, when worms with a mutation in the daf-2 gene were observed to lead active and healthy lives twice as long as that of normal worms (1). Since then, the quest to determine what makes these worms live so long has spurred powerful “top-down ” genomics or proteomic ap-proaches in wide and unbiased screens o