4 replies to this topic

[Acetylglutathione]

I am a rat breeder, selling rats to pet owners and others. I also have experience breeding other animals if anyone is interested.

I currently have 39, some of which are dark, others white, hairless, big and small, over 1 year old and under 1 month old.

As you all know, rats multiply extremely fast and 2 rats can become over 1000 in a year so I could easily arrive at 100s or 1000s of rats in a short time

 

I've been interested in breeding rats for increased life expectancy because as you all know both wild and pet rats generally only live to be 2 years or around that age. It would be nice to break the current record of 7 years?

 

Does anyone have knowledge which breeding technique would maximize longevity genes?

 

 

[Mind]

Another member is raising/breeding rats and conducting life extension experiments. Check it out. Maybe there is some collaboration opportunity.

[QuestforLife]

regarding techniques for maximising longevity, from my understanding time to maturity is correlated to longevity. So what that means is that if you preferentially bred those rats that took longer to reach sexual maturity (assuming you can determine this), you would after a number of generations obtain longer lived rats.

Edited by QuestforLife, 27 February 2024 - 02:59 PM.

[AussieVampire]

I've thought of doing this before.

The rats that are fertile for longer have aged better genetically than their peers. As declining fertility is correlated with aging.

Find the age where approximately 50% of the rats are infertile.
Do not let them breed until this age and do this for a handful of generations.
Then establish the new age where 50% of rats are infertile (which has hopefully increased) and don't let them breed until this age.

Rinse, repeat this process.

I hypothesize you'll have amazing results with this. You're only limit with this experiment is your own time. 

[QuestforLife]

I've thought of doing this before.

The rats that are fertile for longer have aged better genetically than their peers. As declining fertility is correlated with aging.

Find the age where approximately 50% of the rats are infertile.
Do not let them breed until this age and do this for a handful of generations.
Then establish the new age where 50% of rats are infertile (which has hopefully increased) and don't let them breed until this age.

Rinse, repeat this process.

I hypothesize you'll have amazing results with this. You're only limit with this experiment is your own time. 

 

It's a good idea, and much more practical than my suggestion of selecting rats (to breed) that reached maturity later.

 

I wonder if the experiment has ever been done?

 

Humans are basically doing this experiment on themselves today, at least in the developed world, with women putting off pregnancy as long as possible to develop their careers. So, in theory we should be gradually getting naturally longer lived humans. But it also has two undesirable effects: 1) a large drop in population, as even the women who manage to get pregnant end up having less children than they would have if they had started earlier; 2) there are more birth abnormalities like downs syndrome, because it's a 'save the worse eggs for last' situation, with chromosomal abnormalities common in the last 'successful' divisions of the oocytes . Number 1) we could probably deal with in a rat experiment, so long as we started with a lot of rats. Number 2) is tricky and could confound the experiment, if rats have the same issues as humans.

Edited by QuestforLife, 20 January 2025 - 09:41 AM.