The observation that newborns– and cells restored to pluripotency through reprogramming– are free of age-related damage, despite deriving from a parent cell that may be decades old, stands at odds with the inexorable accumulation of such damage during our lives. Yuri Deigin’s lecture highlighted strong evidence for active rejuvenation of germline cells at the point of fertilization: a mechanism also activated during the creation of induced pluripotent stem cells, and which might be deployed therapeutically to rejuvenate much more of the body.