One anti-ageing jellyfish, jaldi please!

Botox, facelifts, hair transplants and injecting the blood of teenagers into geriatrics - now outlawed by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), although it's hard to tell what the next Twilight movie will make fashionable, if not legal, again.

The quest to defy ageing and death is, well, undying. It has led scientists in Spain recently to unlock the genetic code of the 'immortal' jellyfish, Turritopsis dohrnii, which can, literally, turn back its biological clock to revert into a clump of juvenile cells. Oh, to be a larva again!

In the past, we've also pinned our hopes of eternal youth on the wrinkly naked mole rats and even wrinklier centenarian tortoises, who may defy - but certainly look - their age, leading one to wonder: sure, the former can stave off menopause, cancer, cardiovascular or other age-related diseases to theoretically 'live forever', and the latter can persevere well into their 100s, but at what cost?


The T dohrnii, on the other hand, are genetically- and aesthetically-blessed, making them the ideal poster-species for immortality. And though scientists warned that they haven't yet figured out how to replicate their neat rejuvenatory tricks in humans yet - or, at least, harvest it into skin creams or pulverise it into youth elixir-smoothies we can chug - with our never-say-die attitude, the day isn't too far.