Pheromones and longevity in worms (and flies)

By: James V. Kohl | Published on: November 29, 2013

Scent of Opposite Sex Shortens Lives of Flies and Worms

by Ed Yong
Excerpt: “More seriously, she notes that it’s still not clear if human pheromones even exist. Mice clearly do use pheromones, however, so the next step would be to see if mice can influence the pace of aging in the opposite sex, without ever actually mating. “The experiments could be done, but they’re tricky,” she says.”
My comment: The next step is for academically irresponsible researchers to acknowledge what experimental evidence has already repeatedly shown about food odors, pheromones and longevity. For example, it is perfectly clear that human pheromones exist.
1) Food odors associated with nutrition determine what mice and humans eat (Mori & Sakano, 2011).
2) Experimental evidence also shows that what mice and humans eat is metabolized to species-specific chemicals that control the physiology of reproduction (see for review: Kohl, 2013).
3) Nutrient-dependent pheromone-controlled reproduction in mammals occurs via biophysically constrained molecular mechanisms, which are conserved in species from microbes to man (see for review Facciotti, 2013).
4) Food odors and pheromones alter one signaling pathway in yeasts (Schmidt, 2013).
5) “The mechanism by which one signaling pathway regulates a second provides insight into how cells integrate multiple stimuli to produce a coordinated response.” (Schmidt, 2013)
6) That fact can be compared to the fact that food odors and pheromones alter one signaling pathway in mice and humans to produce a coordinated response (Boehm et al., 2005)
After a brief review of what is already known, cruel experiments could be done to determine if food odors associated with nutrient stress can influence the pace of aging before the animals die of starvation. But what would those experiments prove? It is obvious that animals cannot live very long without food, no matter how much they appear to like the food odors. It should be equally obvious that mammalian pheromones influence the pace of aging in mice and humans.
Someone should stop the cruel experiments before people like Brunet start them. There is no need to compare data from experiments with food odors to prove there is social stress associated with not mating when potent pheromones direct the same molecular mechanisms of species survival. People like Brunet should simply accept that fact that social stress associated with pheromones and nutrient stress associated with food odors reduce the lifespan in every species, not just in mice. How could that not be the case in humans?
Does experimental evidence show that the molecular mechanism of our existence are different from other species? Is it not perfectly clear that in mice and humans the nutrient-dependent physiology of reproduction is pheromone-controlled like it is in every other species on this planet?
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Excerpt from Kohl (2013) “In the mouse model, the diet of the mice determines their nutrient-dependent pheromone production and social interactions with other mice. The mouse model also reveals something that was not revealed in the context of dogs and wolves (Axelsson et al., 2013; Lord, 2013). The aversive human body odor associated with fish odor syndrome can be epigenetically controlled by reducing dietary choline intake. It can also be controlled through antibiotic use (citations in Li et al., 2013). This may be important in the context of chemical ecology and epigenetic effects of genetically predisposed nutrient-dependent pheromone-controlled human interactions (Martin et al., 2010; Preti & Leyden, 2010).”