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.
The world's only immortal animal
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Re: The world's only immortal animal
#42What 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 v…
I mean people live a limited time and do not have to have their cells do these complex transformations, yet a large part of us still manage to get cancer before we die.
Also, I do not believe that stuff about mutations being just as likely to be good. If you have a complex organism any change is far more likely to be detrimental than positive. When you hit your watch with hammer, it is very unlikely you will get a better watch. It is much more likely you will get a broken watch.
Re: The world's only immortal animal
#43Because they are able to bypass death, the number of individuals is spiking. Did they like ... just evolve or something? You'd think they'd have spiked before now and reached equilibrium.
I am surprised the tourism lobbies are not fighting the fishing lobbies on that one.
Re: The world's only immortal animal
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 constructi…
Keeping a journal probably wouldn't help. Take the case of Clive Wearing, who developed anterograde amnesia after a bout of encephalitis. He can conduct an orchestra, but he can't remember what he did 10 minutes before. He keeps a journal. It's a timestamped log of him saying that he's "finally awake" over and over. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clive_Wearing In addition to robbing you of your past, amnesia makes the…
Re: The world's only immortal animal
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 constructi…
Such is the case for the leaders in the Æon Flux movie.
Re: The world's only immortal animal
#46Because they are able to bypass death, the number of individuals is spiking. Did they like ... just evolve or something? You'd think they'd have spiked before now and reached equilibrium.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/wildlife/4357829/Immortal-j...
The picture is not of Turritopsis nutricula, but T. rubra according to this page
http://www.ville-ge.ch/mhng/hydrozoa/hydrozoa-directory.htm
This is Maria's page
http://www.personal.psu.edu/mum31/
and the related journal article about ships' ballast is here
Re: The world's only immortal animal
#47Re: The world's only immortal animal
#48What 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 v…
Imagine you have a series of integers being multiplied. Each step, you increase 1/3 of them and decrease 1/3 of them - you leave the remaining 1/3 untouched.
After enough steps, you have zero.
Re: The world's only immortal animal
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 constructi…
Until one day, there is a fire and all his computers with memories are burned beyond repair. And that too on the day of a reboot...