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Lenny Guarente and his former postdoc David Sinclair can dramatically extend the life span of yeast. They're battling over how this works, and competing head-to-head to grant extra years to humans
BOSTON AND CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS-At 34, David Sinclair is a rising star. His spacious ninth-floor office at Harvard Medical School boasts a panoramic Boston view. His rapidly growing lab pulled off the feat of publishing in both Nature and Science last year, and it made headlines around the world with a study of the possible antiaging properties of a molecule found in red wine. In a typical day, he fields calls from a couple practicing a radical diet to extend life span, and from an actor hunting for antiaging pills and the chance to invest in Sinclair's new company.
There is, however, another side to this glossy picture of success. Sinclair is engaged in a tense and very public battle with his mentor, a renowned scientist based across the Charles River at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Leonard Guarente, 51, is an undisputed leader in the field of aging, an author of major discoveries about genes that prolong life. For 4 years, Sinclair all but lived in Guarente's lab as a postdoctoral fellow, and the two grew extremely close.
Thanks in part to a glowing recommendation from Guarente, Sinclair nabbed a tenure-track spot on Harvard's faculty in late 1999. he then made clear that his old professor's pet theories weren't off limits. At a meeting at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in late 2002, Sinclair surprised Guarente by challenging him on how a key gene Guarente discovered extends life in yeast. That sparked a bitter dispute that crescendoed this winter, when the pair published dueling papers.
Researchers who study aging are finding the quarrel both intellectually provocative and a lively source of gossip. And the reverberations extend well beyond that community. At its core, the argument involves one of the hottest topics in longevity research: how cutting calories may increase life span and how its effects can be translated into antiaging therapies. But the dispute, which remains unresolved, involves molecular biology so intricate that many scientists are uncertain how to assess it. It's also not clear how it applies to other organisms, such as...