If I were a worm, I would rather be the long-lived mutant than the normal worm, that's for sure.

If I were a worm, I would rather be the long-lived mutant than the normal worm, that's for sure.

The idea that ageing was subject to control was completely unexpected.

In principle, if you understood the mechanisms of keeping things repaired, you could keep things going indefinitely.

Ageing is very exciting. But if I didn't work on ageing, I'd want to work on the brain. There are really cool techniques you can use now. And bioinformatics. The methods you can use for comparing large data sets - that's so powerful.

It was like stepping on to an escalator; I could do anything. I was just made for science.

In the early '90s, we discovered mutations that could double the normal life span of worms.