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Cells across the body talk to each other about aging

quantamagazine.org

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Re: Cells across the body talk to each other about aging

#131

Post by pants2 »

I_Am_Nous wrote: post #111
m463 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ok probably stupidly curious: A study of 81 historical eunuchs in Korea's royal court found a 14- to 19-year increase in lifespan compared to intact men of similar socioeconomic background; these eunuchs had a centenarian rate of over 3%. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castration#Medical_consequence...

Pets often live longer after being neutered or spayed so it's interesting to see a correlation in humans.

Based on this observation I posed this question on /r/AskMen some time ago. "Would you be castrated to live 15 years longer?" - overwhelmingly the answer was no.

Re: Cells across the body talk to each other about aging

#132

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

m463 wrote: post #88
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #41

"As a worm ages, the quality of its eggs or sperm declines — what we refer to as the ticking of a biological clock. The decline is also reflected in the germ cells’ changing ability to transmit signals from the brain’s mitochondria, he suggested. As the worm grows older, its germline transmits the repair signal less effectively, and so its body declines, too. Scientists don’t yet know whether these findings apply to…

ok probably stupidly curious: A study of 81 historical eunuchs in Korea's royal court found a 14- to 19-year increase in lifespan compared to intact men of similar socioeconomic background; these eunuchs had a centenarian rate of over 3%. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castration#Medical_consequence...

That seems really statistically significant.

It probably can't be explained by loss of testosterone alone - since less than 1% of people live to be 100+.

It'd be good to know, though, what the lifespan of women in a similar environment would be.

Re: Cells across the body talk to each other about aging

#133

Post by [deleted] »

pants2 wrote: post #131
I_Am_Nous wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pets often live longer after being neutered or spayed so it's interesting to see a correlation in humans.

Based on this observation I posed this question on /r/AskMen some time ago. "Would you be castrated to live 15 years longer?" - overwhelmingly the answer was no.

[deleted]

Re: Cells across the body talk to each other about aging

#134

Post by grishka »

speedylight wrote: post #90

Aging should be classified as a disease because there has to be a set of biological levers that we can manipulate with drugs or other forms of medicine which will have an effect on the aging process across the entire. Like using RNA to reprogram the cells in the body to do things outside of what’s encoded in our base DNA. I don’t see why aging can’t be reversible, I’ve heard some people say it’s an impossible task be…

> But aging is just damage that accumulates over time, but damage can be repaired with the right tools.

No, that's outdated. Another theory that aging is an intentional, programmed process is gaining more and more traction lately. Damage does accumulate over time, but it's not because the cells are incapable of repairing it, it's because they deliberately don't want to repair it. The developmental program that starts with conception just turns self-destructive at some point. We "only" need to reset its state to such that corresponds to a younger age.

Re: Cells across the body talk to each other about aging

#135

Post by grishka »

omeid2 wrote: post #91
speedylight wrote: post #90

Aging should be classified as a disease because there has to be a set of biological levers that we can manipulate with drugs or other forms of medicine which will have an effect on the aging process across the entire. Like using RNA to reprogram the cells in the body to do things outside of what’s encoded in our base DNA. I don’t see why aging can’t be reversible, I’ve heard some people say it’s an impossible task be…

> I don’t see why aging can’t be reversible Aging is loss of information, you can't reverse that. You can prevent it though.

If aging is loss of information, then why does reproduction work? How does a non-zero-aged organism, in which some of the information was supposedly lost, give birth to zero-aged offspring with all the same information intact?

Re: Cells across the body talk to each other about aging

#136

Post by grishka »

jdjdjdkdksmdnd wrote: post #44

how does anyone deny the epigenetic model of aging demonstrated by david sinclair?

David Sinclair is a social media influencer more than anything else. His insistence on life extension through lifestyle alone is telling, because it's so easy to sell to the general public. Except this doesn't work and can't work — if an organism has a goal to destroy itself, which it does as part of its aging program, it WILL destroy itself, no matter how much you change its environment. You need to overwrite that internal goal state to truly cure aging which can't be done through any manner of lifestyle interventions.

Re: Cells across the body talk to each other about aging

#137

Post by pineaux »

lock-the-spock wrote: post #109
phkahler wrote: post #56

I've come to think mitochondria are somehow fundamental to health in ways we can't even see. No sources, but they seem relevant to structure of the overall organism, proper healing of wounds, something in the brain (they can move between neurons), apoptosis, and a few other odd things I've seen talked about. They also come up in any number of diseases and conditions. All far beyond what you'd expect from "powerhouse…

You would likely enjoy the book "Power, Sex, Suicide - Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life" by nick Hall, one of the most insightful books I've read in a while. It is all about the evolutionary history of mitochondria and our complex cells and how it affects our and other animals' lives. I learned something new on every page. Dense but very well written and clear to follow.

Love this book

Re: Cells across the body talk to each other about aging

#138

Post by hgomersall »

yarg wrote: post #129
wcoenen wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The survival of the individual is indeed not what natural selection is selecting for. Otherwise phenomena like eusocial insects with sterile workers would not make sense. What is actually selected for, is genes that somehow promote more copies of themselves. This is the main takeaway from the book "the selfish gene". However, the example of ants and bees shows that this doesn't exactly promote long lifespan in the st…

The survival of the individual is exactly what is being selected for. The influence of an individual gene is not distinguishable from those that are packaged with it. So what is selected for over any single cycle is sets of sets of genes conveying advantage. Taking half of your genes from each parent could only select whole useful chromosomes from each parent (but is far better than nothing); In order for genes to be…

There are plenty of ways in which the genes of an individual may survive better when the individual has reduced survival. The individual in this case being the large multicellular organism. Hence we see all sorts of weird strategies in the wild like sexual cannibalism: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_cannibalism

Re: Cells across the body talk to each other about aging

#139

Post by tommiegannert »

alexschnapp wrote: post #29
LASR wrote: post #3

You know, I've recently wondered quite a bit about aging and how any of it makes sense. What has perplexed me is the notion of honest signals[1] in a world governed by natural selection and the survival of the fittest. Why wouldn't cheating exclusively emerge as the only strategy? Why wouldn't a species evolve a mechanism to survive longer and longer till it completely dominates? Then it dawned on me that the surviva…

There is no more evolutionary pressure on lifespan after you have children since you have successfully passed on the ‘aging’ gene. We used to live much shorter lives, being able to die of old age was rare, therefore, no selection. If we start to have children at 90 years old we may be able to double our lifespans (while the ones that are unable to reproduce earlier will not pass on that inability). There is no cheati…

> If we start to have children at 90 years old

Interesting thought. So if we simply force people to reprocreate later in life, we'll select for genes that allow for that, possibly also bringing longer lifespans in general (to protect the early offspring.)

I wonder if education, and cultural protection of teenagers has already done that to some extent.

In short, the path to immortality is to hold off children longer and longer... Hypothetically.

Re: Cells across the body talk to each other about aging

#140

Post by d1sxeyes »

startupsfail wrote: post #119
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your genes reproduce, you don't. It's more complicated than that. Your genes reproduce, but then that child is in your care, and you teach them your values. Then your values reproduce. And then you're into nature vs. nurture. Your values can't reproduce if you have stupid genes that cause your offspring to die of cystic fibrosis, but your genes can't reproduce if you have stupid values that cause your offspring to…

Yep. The immune system is watching for that and killing you off, if you’re being a social reject. That works for any social animal. Plus for humans there’s also a suicide trick.

Not sure if you're being facetious or not, but it's not the immune system killing you off.

That said, you are less likely to reproduce successfully if you are 'a social reject'.

You will meet fewer potential mates, fewer of those will be willing to reproduce with you, etc.

Whatever it was that made you a social reject, if it's something you can pass on either through nature or nuture, is less likely to be passed on.

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