In the new research, Walker and his colleagues found that as fruit flies reach middle age -- about one month into their two-month lifespan -- their mitochondria change from their original small, round shape.
The study, published Sept. 6 in the journal Nature Communications, reports that the UCLA scientists removed the damaged mitochondria by breaking up enlarged mitochondria into smaller pieces -- and that when they did, the flies became more active and more energetic and had more endurance. Following the treatment, female flies lived 20 percent longer than their typical lifespan, while males lived 12 percent longer, on average.
The research targeted the mitochondria to delay the onset of age related diseases. There are of course other ideas such as to use senolytics to remove dead cells called senescent cells. This use of senolytics is based on the senescent theory of aging and is actively being researched.
My thoughts on this is the first step is to develop and have criteria to determine biological age. This likely requires biomarkers which represent the true age of the individual. We do know the longer a person is alive the more damage they take so the older they are, but we don't all take that damage at the same rate so we aren't all aging at the same rate. For this reason, using the numerical age is not so informative even for risk assessments because 40 for one person isn't the same 40 for another person and the risk assessment is going on 40 of the average person (bell curve average).