“Want to live into your hundreds? If you’re young and fertile, you have to decide now whether you want to take a drug that will extend your life by a few decades.

Researchers at Stanford Medical School have discovered that blocking the activity of certain genes can extend the lives of roundworms by up to 30 percent – but only if the worms are fertile. This is further confirmation of what many scientists had already suspected, which is that the key to life extension is tied to the reproductive system. Geneticist Anne Brunet, co-author on the new study, explained:

It makes a sort of sense that the reproductive system would be involved in life span, since that is really the only ‘immortal’ part of an organism. In that context, the body is just the mortal envelope.”

Read more at io9