At last!  Now that the Baby Boomers and even the Millennials are just beginning to think those thoughts of “Am I getting old? Not me! It can’t happen to me! Can it?”  Now comes “Compound 14”—a recently discovered molecule triggers  “a chain reaction of events in the cell that . . . well, to make  long technical story short, tricks human body cells into “thinking” the body has just been for a good, solid workout.

Or, put differently, “ZMP” the master regulator, sends the signal that activates “AMPK” the cells’ central energy censor. Got that?

Bottom line: alas, Compound 14 isn’t for sale yet at the corner drugstore, but the work, headed by Ali Tavassoli, a professor of chemical biology, and Felino Cagampang, an associate professor in integrative physiology, is underway at the University of Southhampton in England.

The study, published in the journal, Chemistry and Biology, details how Compound 14 was given to two groups of mice, and the fat, chubby group lost five percent of body weight after receiving it for seven days.

Is that not a big step toward the Fountain of Youth (at least for mice)!

Who knows what wonders await us, thanks to the tools of bio-engineering and synthetic biology . . . provided somehow we can slow the human aging process so we can all hang around until those wonders do arrive.

If you’re not ready for the complete paper in the scientific journal, check out this article in the Washington Post by Ariana Eunjung Cha