Researchers in Israel have found that genetically altering male mice to cause them to express more of the protein SIRT6 allowed them to live up to fifteen percent longer. Haim Cohen and colleagues at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat-Gan, describe in their paper published in Nature, how they veered from following the crowd studying SIRT2 and instead chose to look at SIRT6. In so doing, they discovered that when the mice under study were caused to express more SIRT6, the older males tended to metabolize sugar at a faster rate than normal, which led, they believe, to protecting them from metabolic disorders and a longer lifespan.
