The world's only immortal animal • Hacker News Board

Re: The world's only immortal animal

#21

Post by whyenot » Sat, Mar 20, 2010, 3:50 AM UTC

says Dr. Maria Miglietta of the Smithsonian Tropical Marine Institute.

There is not Smithsonian Tropical Marine Institute. The author of this article meant the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.

http://www.stri.org/english/research/facilities/marine/bocas...

Re: The world's only immortal animal

#22

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Mar 20, 2010, 3:52 AM UTC

[deleted]

Re: The world's only immortal animal

#23

Post by pyre » Sat, Mar 20, 2010, 4:03 AM UTC

boucher wrote: post #20

tyler wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I'm not particularly picky about my forms of immortality.

Seems like immortality without memory is useless, so really that's the question.

Depends on whether or not you can selectively preserve memory. If could be useful if it acted sort of like amnesia where you retain things like muscle memory and factual memory, but not personal memory. Though I wouldn't necessarily look forward to the prospect of losing my life experiences.

Re: The world's only immortal animal

#24

Post by Qz » Sat, Mar 20, 2010, 4:04 AM UTC

boucher wrote: post #20

tyler wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I'm not particularly picky about my forms of immortality.

Seems like immortality without memory is useless, so really that's the question.

Makes you wonder if immortality without memory is even immortality at all.

Re: The world's only immortal animal

#25

Post by pyre » Sat, Mar 20, 2010, 4:20 AM UTC

javajones wrote: post #10

So is this animals natural predator diminishing in numbers, which is why they are spiking?

It could be any number of things. I saw a documentary about a different type of jellyfish that is becoming a problem in East Asia due to a combination of over-fishing of predators and warmer waters which increases their reproduction yields.

Re: The world's only immortal animal

#26

Post by pyre » Sat, Mar 20, 2010, 4:22 AM UTC

Qz wrote: post #24

boucher wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like immortality without memory is useless, so really that's the question.

Makes you wonder if immortality without memory is even immortality at all.

It still is immortality. In a world with a large population we might think more about what makes us individuals as what we wish to preserve, but from a survival-of-the-species point of view, it is immortality.

Re: The world's only immortal animal

#27

Post by pyre » Sat, Mar 20, 2010, 4:24 AM UTC

bh23ha wrote: post #2

What about single celled life? In a division one call seems to get renewed while another seems to age, you say. What if this animal is doing something similar?

There are a number of things that lead to cell mortality in multi-cellular organisms.

Re: The world's only immortal animal

#28

Post by stevejohnson » Sat, Mar 20, 2010, 4:56 AM UTC

This is a decidedly time lord-like form of immortality.

Re: The world's only immortal animal

#29

Post by patio11 » Sat, Mar 20, 2010, 4:59 AM UTC

boucher wrote: post #20

tyler wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I'm not particularly picky about my forms of immortality.

Seems like immortality without memory is useless, so really that's the question.

Write stuff down! BAM, problem solved. (Seriously speaking, consider the sci-fi short story possibilities of an individual who had to reboot every 80 years or so, but who had had access to a computer and competent legal/investment advice for roughly the same timescale as the present-day Catholic Church has been in operation. Age 0 through 24 is essentially one long data dump, but he's gotten pretty good at constructing his curricula, given a few millenia to practice it. They call him Jerome the Eldest, he is richer than most nations, and he lives life depressed and alone, until one day...)

Re: The world's only immortal animal

#30

Post by dbz » Sat, Mar 20, 2010, 5:00 AM UTC

hristov wrote: post #12

What about enthropy? I would expect that after going between polyp and adult many times the DNA of some cells may get damaged, and the cells may not convert correctly to their new cell types, and eventually the organism will become more and more wrong until it dies.

In humans, DNA Polymerase (the thing that replicates DNA) makes about 1 in 10,000 base pairing errors. After other enzymes "proof read"- the mistake count is 1 in 1 billion. Keep in mind, that there is a lot of "junk DNA." junk DNA is DNA that does nothing, but a lot of mistakes are made in the junk DNA and the introns (parts of the junk DNA that do nothing) are cut out and we only keep in exons.

Now I have another very important point to make. Errors in base pairing, also known as mutations- are usually very very good. Why? Because 1/3 of errors are bad, 1/3 do absolutely nothing, and 1/3 are good and provide benefits. That means 2/3 of the time- mutations do nothing or help the organism.

So, I guess I am saying I think you should expect a different result =p. Mutations are good!