It is futile for an artist to try to create an environment because you have an environment around you all the time. Any living organism has an environment.
What I was concerned with was life: what are the major features that are common to all living organisms that subtly define life. So I looked at the whole problem as a chemist, as a biochemist, and as a molecular biologist.
The chief condition on which, life, health and vigor depend on, is action. It is by action that an organism develops its faculties, increases its energy, and attains the fulfillment of its destiny.
Organisms in the ocean provide over 40 percent of the oxygen we breathe, and they're the major sink for capturing all the carbon dioxide we constantly release into the atmosphere.
Sometime in the future, I am a hundred percent certain scientists will sit down at a computer terminal, design what they want the organism to do, and build it.
Perhaps genes did regulate the aging process. Perhaps different organisms had different life spans because a universal regulatory 'clock' was set to run at different speeds in different species.
If the aging process is controlled in a similar way in worms and humans, then we can use what we learn about worms to speed our study of higher organisms.
People are not the only interesting organism on earth. From the point of view of scientific or commercial value, there are lots of interesting organisms.
Well, we can study aging in people, but of course those studies take decades. So what we try to do is we use simpler organisms to try and understand the basic mechanisms and so in my laboratory, for example, we use things like simple baker's yeast that we use to make bread.
It's been known since 1916 that cutting back calories is beneficial in every organism it's been tested on - from yeast to worms to mice to monkeys. I think it would be a surprise if we are an exception to that rule.
