Humorously enough, from the article, the first thing to come to mind when talking about super-long lived, short humans: elves and fairies and such nonsense.
Heck the health-problems those with two sets have and the (apparently) restricted diets even remind me of the constitution penalty and careful foodstuffs elves have traditionally had in D&D and variants (like Pathfinder).
Obviously, this will be nothing like that. However, the similarities (meager as they are) kind of remind me of the first story’s scientist going, “Hey, birds, ants, and bacteria all aggregate together for various social and health-related reasons, so why not make non-living matter that does the same?” kind of vague and “out there” thought that actually led to something. (Obviously, my idle thought is not directly going to lead to “something”, as I’m not a researcher. Still, interesting way of looking at imagination and science.)
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