[DIYbio] DIY longevity biology

Q: Some of our readers are DIY self experimenters and citizen science enthusiasts. Can you provide any advice or warnings about these substances?

Iryna: We plan to make public reports about the conduct of the study an online, to publish the design of the experiment, the choice of optimal methods of research that can help citizens better understand how conduct research in this area.

Anton Kulaga, Edouard Debonneuil: Do It Yourself biology is great! When it is done right it strengthens connections between professional researchers and citizen scientists where all parts benefit a lot. So we support DIY movement, we even organize DIY workshops in Kiev and provide biology training as one of the perks. The main advice here is to keep contacts with professional scientists in the field of your citizen science research. Clearly, not all labs are friendly to DIY activists, but the world is huge and you can find labs that will be eager to help you with your research, and vice versa find ways for you to help them.

In ageing research and in lifespan tests in particular there are several groups trying to do something. One of them is coordinated by the LongeCity forum, a quite active forum  but many of its activists do experiments with… a huge room for improvement in scientific quality. We have to warn that lifespan experiments are not as easy as they may look like, many details count and it is not just buying mice and feeding them with some drugs. For example, lab lifespan tests usually involve many animals in both control and test groups and the strains are important. A first step is to look at current interventions databases and look at interventions done on mice (or animal of your interest); one of such databases is created and maintained by Denigma project (http://www.denigma.de/lifespan/interventions/ ).

The easiest thing is to reproduce experiments of others, as dosages and protocols are already designed there. Even to reproduce experiments it is desirable to write to the researchers that performed them as many details, some of them potentially important, are not in papers.

To get fast and reliable experiments it is useful to buy aged animals from a specific strain, but depending on countries such animals might be restrained to animal research facilities with very restrictive agreements. DIY activists cannot afford having many animals so you should cooperate: fund labs to conduct lifespan tests for you, create joint vivariums or distribute your tests among many people (but be aware that distributed lifespan tests might not be well trusted and therefore be hard to publish). You have to make sure that treated and control mice are treated identically, so double-blinded tests are highly desirable.

(source H+Magazine, http://hplusmagazine.com/2013/10/14/i-am-a-little-mouse-and-i-want-to-live-longer-support-crowdfunded-longevity-research/ )