Ants might be small but they are pretty mighty. They can attack and defend by biting and also stinging with injected or sprayed chemicals. Here though the focus is on what happens to Ant-Man when he’s ant-sized. And how time passes for him when he’s small versus big. And I don’t mean does time pass in slow or fast motion, but rather how fast does he age as Ant-Man?
The mantle of Ant-Man has been worn by a number of people since biophysicist Dr. Hank Pym discovered his “Pym Particles” that enabled him to shrink. He also invented a helmet that could control insects so he had a posse with him and under his control at all times while ant-sized. Of course, Pym also invented Ultron, which didn’t really work out that well.
Professional thief Scott Lang stole Pym’s Ant-Man suit in order to save his daughter Cassie, who had a heart defect. This leads to his reformation — and plays out in the backstory in Ant-Man the movie — and Hank Pym becomes an encouraging mentor for Lang.
It’s intriguing to consider how much Ant-Man ages when he shrinks down to his tiny size. Which really gets at how he — and we — age in our normal everyday lives. Even if we aren’t a superhero like Ant-Man — who has the superpower to shrink to super small size. Ant-Man was introduced back in the comic book “Tales to Astonish” back in 1963, another in the multitude of Marvel characters created by Stan Lee, his brother Larry Lieber, and Jack Kirby.
The basic idea about how long cells could live was originally described by Dr. Leonard Hayflick in the 1960s who showed that animal cells have a limited capacity to reproduce. Instead of having the ability to replicate indefinitely, a limit of ~50 times was observed which has subsequently become known as “The Hayflick Limit.” Senescence as applied to cells means the loss of the ability to divide and the ultimate result of this process is death.
The lifespan of any organism is the sum total of all the processes occurring in all cells in the organism and animals have different rates and have different maximum life spans. However, the general pattern of aging is similar across species. A human is considered elderly at 85 years of “real time” whereas a worker ant, according to Laurent Keller, evolutionary ecologist at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland, would be extremely elderly at the age of three.
If we assume scaling of cellular clocks, while watching Ant-Man, you might keep in mind that for every minute that Scott Lang spends shrunk to ant size he is actually aging ~28 minutes in human time. To avoid premature aging at human size, Scott would need something to counteract this. Fortunately, he might be able to alter mechanisms that regulate metabolism and cellular growth. A key regulator of which is “rapamyocin” also known as “mTOR” — terms that sound like they were comic book chemicals created by Stan Lee himself.
Rapamyocin — named for the antifungal found in soil samples taken from the island of Rapa Nui — has immunosuppressive and antitumour effects, along with the ability to extend lifespans in yeast, worms, fruitflies, and mice. It’s also approved for use as a treatment for numerous cancers and could help reduce the burden of morbidity that befalls most humans as we age. Extension of lifespan may lead to a “compression of morbidity” where most of the illnesses across our lives can be compressed into a shorter timeframe occurring near the end of life.
Discovery and development of “senolytic drugs” — pharmaceuticals that interfere with aging related breakdown in cellular reproduction — that could inhibit mTOR could be used to change lifespan and to alter disease processes such as malignant tumour growth in cancer. In any case, these would clearly need to be included in Hank Pym’s chemical cocktail that he would provide to Scott Lang for use as Ant-Man.
Real science is unlikely to discover Pym particles any time soon. Yet, understanding longevity in biological organisms will provide insight into mechanism of aging, how to increase lifespan, and reduce the burden of age-related loss of function seen across the animal kingdom.
Evolution of “eusociality” — the highest level of organization of animal society with cooperative care of the “brood,” presence of overlapping generations in adult colonies and division of labour — as seen in ants, bees, and wasps brought with it an amazing increase in lifespan. Laurent Keller explained to me that “evolution of eusociality has been accompanied by a 100-fold increase in lifespan. It would thus be like a primate living for 4000 years”.
It’s fitting, then, that this colonial “team work” approach found in the real life of ants is also found in Ant-Man’s main team-up — the Avengers. Of course, any enhancement in longevity functioning as part of that team is probably offset by the dangerous nature of day to day life in Avengers mansion.
