Isn't the term "epigenetic" about non-DNA information, like in mitochondria etc, i.e. not something recoverable by just scanning DNA more precisely? If so, it doesn't seem reversable?
Loss of epigenetic information as a cause of mammalian aging
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Re: Loss of epigenetic information as a cause of mammalian aging
#12Isn't the term "epigenetic" about non-DNA information, like in mitochondria etc, i.e. not something recoverable by just scanning DNA more precisely? If so, it doesn't seem reversable?
Epigenetic is DNA + Environment
Re: Loss of epigenetic information as a cause of mammalian aging
#13I think its a cool theory and seems the most reasonable from all the other theories of aging. However I am a bit disappointed when I only see David's name on every paper published on this topic. Why dont other institutions start similar studies to verify this claim?
Some say that there are issues with this and related works.
https://twitter.com/charlesmbrenner/status/16135817576344576...
Re: Loss of epigenetic information as a cause of mammalian aging
#14I think its a cool theory and seems the most reasonable from all the other theories of aging. However I am a bit disappointed when I only see David's name on every paper published on this topic. Why dont other institutions start similar studies to verify this claim?
I assume the time to publish is too long, and the research too expensive. Aging takes time. Hopefully this changes soon.
Coming soon, on-demand aging.
Re: Loss of epigenetic information as a cause of mammalian aging
#15Isn't the term "epigenetic" about non-DNA information, like in mitochondria etc, i.e. not something recoverable by just scanning DNA more precisely? If so, it doesn't seem reversable?
Why would that make it less reversible? Honestly it's not like it was ever easy to reverse DNA damage. Reversing other kinds of damage might be harder, but unless you have more information it's not clear that it _must_ be.
Re: Loss of epigenetic information as a cause of mammalian aging
#16Isn't the term "epigenetic" about non-DNA information, like in mitochondria etc, i.e. not something recoverable by just scanning DNA more precisely? If so, it doesn't seem reversable?
Different genes are activated in different cells. That "gene expression" is done by the placement of particular molecules on different parts of the DNA. That's the epigenetics.
Those molecules can get out of place, and not line up correctly anymore. This research shows that that's a major cause of aging, and that it's possible to reverse it.
Re: Loss of epigenetic information as a cause of mammalian aging
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, but "ageing is a result of increasing entropy" is pretty much the same as saying that ageing is caused by the passage of time. The interesting part here is that they narrow down which loss of information is important.
Increasing entropy in a system can be avoided with an external energy source.
Well what you need is more like an easily accessible source of low entropy.
You can substitute a big concentration of energy (the concentration part is important) to some extent. However the energy usage of a computer (the simplest example of a device that lowers entropy in a flexible way) is many orders of magnitude higher than the theoretical limit.
So I'm not entirely sure how many bits of entropy it takes to reverse ageing, but just the computational power required may release enough heat to melt a few cities. And that's before figuring out how to practically do anything (though arguably with enough computing power you can probably just do some advanced version of percussive maintenance).
Edit: Huh turns out the Landauer limit at room temperature is more or less the reciprocal of Avogadro's constant, so the theoretical limits could be within the realm of what's humanly possible. Still it means you probably need a couple of Watts per bit of information for each molecule, divided by however efficient the system processing the hundreds of zettabytes is.
Re: Loss of epigenetic information as a cause of mammalian aging
#18Isn't the term "epigenetic" about non-DNA information, like in mitochondria etc, i.e. not something recoverable by just scanning DNA more precisely? If so, it doesn't seem reversable?
All your cells have the same DNA but each cell type deactivated certain DNA regions that don’t apply to it.
The theory here is that as we age the cells epigenetics fuzz out, so that skin cells start to look a bit more like neurons and other cells and vice versa.
Re: Loss of epigenetic information as a cause of mammalian aging
#19Isn't the term "epigenetic" about non-DNA information, like in mitochondria etc, i.e. not something recoverable by just scanning DNA more precisely? If so, it doesn't seem reversable?
Epigenetic is DNA + Environment
Not really. Environmental factors can change this, but it’s largely just things that change how DNA is used without changing the DNA itself.
A lot of it is just part of normal development.
Re: Loss of epigenetic information as a cause of mammalian aging
#20> loss of epigenetic information is a reversible cause of aging
Ok, so how do we reverse the loss of epigenetic information?