It is something that interests us all doesn't it? How long will we live? We hear of people who smoke and drink daily living to 100 and then someone else with a seemingly healthy life style dropping dead on the badminton court at the age of 40? Well as usual, science is on the case!

A massive genetic study of people who lived for more than 100 years has found dozens of new clues to the biology of ageing.

The findings won’t be turned overnight into longevity elixirs or lifespan tests, nor do they untangle the complex interactions between biology, lifestyle and environment that ultimately determine how long — and how well — one lives.

But they do offer much-needed toeholds for scientists studying the basic mechanisms of ageing, which remain largely unexplained.

“It shows that genetics plays an extremely important role at these extreme ages. And it begins to be a not-unsolvable puzzle,” said Boston University gerontologist Thomas Perls. “If we start looking at these genes and what they do, we better understand the biology of extreme longevity.”

Published July 2 in Science, the findings come from gene tests of 801 people enrolled in the Perls-founded New England Centenarian Study, the largest study in the world of people who’ve lived past 100

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