It seems the guys at the Daniell Lab at the University of Central Florida are on the cusp of trials for a “cure” for diabetes. The molecular biology here is pretty hairy but the essence  of what researchers have done is use chloroplasts (the parts of plant cells that contain the green pigment chlorophyll) to impart genetic messages into animals eating the treated veg. In this case, Henry Daniell’s team used insulin production as the information to impart via treated lettuce. The result was that test mice that were diabetic at the beginning of the trial all had normal blood sugars by the end of eight weeks.

Whether these kinds of results transfer to humans remains an open question. The implications are broad, though. For persons deficient in a variety of hormones, using plant/food based vectors to stimulate production of hormones could someday replace injections and pill based hormone supplements. This could revolutionize replacement of human growth hormone (hGH) since today that requires daily injections.

It’s this kind of thinking that makes it possible to age against the machine.