More on resveratrol in today's New York Times http://tinyurl.com/y5sqwc
You may have to register (it's free) to see the article.

"An ordinary lab mouse will run about one kilometer — five-eights of a mile — on
a treadmill before collapsing from exhaustion. But mice given resveratrol, a
minor component of red wine and other foods, run twice as far. "

This is spin for an article to be published in _Cell_ by Dr Johan Auwerx and
colleagues at the Institute of Genetics and Molecular and Cellular Biology in
Illkirch, France. The reporter paraphrases findings that resveratrol treated
mice have better mitochondrial function, and more mitochondria, than controls.

I recall studies that CR improves mitochondrial function (ROS production,
similar to n-tbha and r-alpha lipoic acid) but not that any of these increased
the number of mitochondria.

Max Watt (Richard Kaufman)

[Thanks for the hot off the presses post. The full paper .pdf is actually
available right now at: http://images.cell.com/images/EdImages/cell/lagouge.pdf
and its supplemental information .pdf at:
http://images.cell.com/images/EdImages/cell/lagougesupplement.pdf

A quick read of the text does not suggest that the number of mitochondria was
increased:

"This amplification of the mitochondria was reflected
both in the quantification of mitochondrial size
(Figure 2A, right panel) and mitochondrial DNA content
(mtDNA, Figure 2D)."

Although the major results reported are again comparing high-fat fed mice with
and without resveratrol, they did also compare mice fed regular chow with and
without resveratrol and got some of the same amazing results. It appears that
high dose resveratrol (400mg/kg for mice which would be over 3 grams per day for
a 60kg human) remodels muscle fiber in a similar manner to that of physical
conditioning activity (except that it has no effect on the heart muscle or
output). In fact the following quote:

"The fact that RSV induces a muscle fiber type switch in
the absence of genetic engineering underscores its powerful
pharmacological activities. RSV could hence be
viewed as a performance-enhancing drug, which, in contrast
to other pharmacological mediators, such as anabolic
steroids, improves performance by changing myofiber
specificity rather than by increasing muscle mass."

is almost certain to cause Olympic officials to ban the use of resveratrol by
competing athletes, and it may strongly influence the government to regulate its
usage in supplements also.

Since this message is so topical and I know the Olafur is running behind
schedule, I have decided to let the message through without his comments, which
he can do later by a response when he gets time and if he has interest. --Paul]