Can CRISPR reverse aging?

I would differ with most answers and say YES I do believe so.

The problem is not whether CRISPR can reverse or not, the problem is do we fully understand all factors of aging or not. Few known factors of aging are

• Declining of phosphatidylcholine- it is an an antioxidant which is present in cell membranes.
• Declining of COENZYME Q10- body makes CoQ10, and your cells use it to produce energy yourbody needs for cell growth and maintenance. It also functions as an antioxidant, which protects the body from damage caused by harmful molecules.
• formation of atherosclerotic plaques- it blocks arteries
• formation of amyloid plaques - causes alzheimer

Currently there are many intravenous supplements to stop or reverse decline of some above enzymes but in future with help of CRISPR Cas9 or similar techniques we may be able to directly alter the genome altogether.

The bigger challenge is forming an exclusive list of factors that causes aging. With time our understanding of the factors causing aging will improve substantially. Actually the Human genome project completed only a decade back, once we have the entire genome sequence of an individual from birth to old age we may be able to figure out all genome mutations caused by aging and may well be able to alter them back using gene editing tools like CRISPR Cas9. I personally believe it can be done lot sooner by building predictive models from multiple individuals of different age using Machine learning(aka artificial intelligence) without having to wait for an individual’s genome data from birth to old age.

My take is if you can hang on for 30–40 years more, you may well be able to live for 200 more. I know my answer sounds the craziest among all here. Can’t help it, I am big believer of law of accelating progress of science and for this case the concept of Longevity escape velocity.

PS:

At low level all factors might not be very well understood but at high level Aubrey de Grey believes it can be summised in the following 7 factors and their Maintenance approach fixes.

He mentioned the ways to tackle aging for ages has been by Gerontology and Geriatrics approaches which didn’t work and may soon be replaced with Maintenance approaches of which CRISPR Cas9 would fall into.

Here is the full talk.

Here is the first human who reversed her age

Reference: https://www.quora.com/Can-CRISPR-reverse-aging?share=1