One of the issues that face those of us with research interests in the biology of ageing is the selection of a model system - and how well that model reflects the biology of ageing in humans. The two main invertebrate models (the fruit fly Drosophila and the nematode worm C. elegans) have major advantages in their powerful genetics and short lifespan, but of course do differ from vertebrates in significant aspects of their biology. The difficulty in studying primates lies in no small part in the length of lifepan - in the case of Rhesus macaques studied here, average lifespan is 27 years, so conducting a complete experiment in this system is likely to be a career-long endeavour.
One of the much investigated interventions known to extend lifespan is caloric restriction - this has been shown to be effective in several systems. This paper reports the results (20 years in) of a research project started in 1989 to investigate the impact of caloric restriction on the
