So they essentially removed two genes and starved the yeast to get it to live a long time. Kind of makes one wonder what those genes do and why they haven't been naturally removed by evolution.

The people in Ecuador are a clue... if you can't remove the gene from both chromosomes without severe problems then any population where the majority doesn't have them will have a lot of defects.

I like the direction that research is going. And I also dig that the guy's name is Longo.