Seeking Immortality? So Have Others...
The gene, MC1R, is already known for producing red hair and pale skin. It turns out variations in this gene can cause a person to look either much younger than their age — or up to two years older.
“For the first time, a gene has been found that explains in part why some people look older and others younger for their age,” Manfred Kayser of Erasmus MC University Medical Center Rotterdam in the Netherlands, said in a press release.
The human genome consists of some 25,000 genes, which are made up of approximately 3 billion letters (base pairs) of DNA. Small deviations in the base pairs occur about once in every 1,000 letters of DNA code, generating small genetic variants.