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Naked Mole Rat’s Longevity Gene Gives Mice a Longer Life

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Re: Naked Mole Rat’s Longevity Gene Gives Mice a Longer Life

#31

Post by dghughes »

ben_w wrote: post #22
code51 wrote: post #7

I don't quite understand the premise of longevity research. Isn't there a concept similar to "no free lunch" in biology? Infinite, cancer-free lives sounds just too good to be true. Something sounds off about that.

> Isn't there a concept similar to "no free lunch" in biology? Not really, no. There are examples of complex multicellular animal life with negligible senescence: some species of tortoises, of sturgeon, naked mole-rats — they don't die "of old age", only by illness and violence. But even if there was no free lunch, we might just be able to pay the price in a way that evolution can't; I'd be very surprised if we could…

Lobsters too. But they urinate from their eyes so it's a trade off.

Re: Naked Mole Rat’s Longevity Gene Gives Mice a Longer Life

#32

Post by seb314 »

code51 wrote: post #7

I don't quite understand the premise of longevity research. Isn't there a concept similar to "no free lunch" in biology? Infinite, cancer-free lives sounds just too good to be true. Something sounds off about that.

I believe that for a species, longer generations means slower evolutionary adaptation to environmental changes.

(at least for our bodies, our hardware. Ideas/technology can iterate somewhat independently.) (longer lifespan and short generations would probably have caused resource shortages at various points in the past)

Re: Naked Mole Rat’s Longevity Gene Gives Mice a Longer Life

#33

Post by vouaobrasil »

code51 wrote: post #7

I don't quite understand the premise of longevity research. Isn't there a concept similar to "no free lunch" in biology? Infinite, cancer-free lives sounds just too good to be true. Something sounds off about that.

What sounds off is that the world will fill increasingly with new people if everyone became immortal...that sounds like a world that would be horrible to live on.

Re: Naked Mole Rat’s Longevity Gene Gives Mice a Longer Life

#34

Post by dgroshev »

davedx wrote: post #19
code51 wrote: post #7

I don't quite understand the premise of longevity research. Isn't there a concept similar to "no free lunch" in biology? Infinite, cancer-free lives sounds just too good to be true. Something sounds off about that.

It's a very valid point. Our past meddling with ecosystems and biologies have often produced unintended consequences to great detriment, it's not hard to imagine those from this too. Even ignoring the biological risks here, the economic risks are quite obvious - we're already in a place where many developed nations have demographic problems where ever greater percentages of the population no longer work, leading to l…

> Our past meddling with ecosystems and biologies have often produced unintended consequences to great detriment

…we also effectively eliminated hunger, whole classes of diseases, and greatly extended healthy human lifespan across the planet.

Ultimately I think this attitude stems from the premise that there's a choice of some "stable state" that humanity abandoned, some kind of safe well balanced haven that we left to "meddle with ecosystems". There isn't, "ecosystems" tried their best to kill us at every point of our history (it seems there was a moment there were just a few thousands of us, nearly wiped out by a natural catastrophe!), and the only way to avoid that is to "meddle", learning from our mistakes and becoming better stewards of the planet.

We were, are, and always will be walking on a tightrope, we are just learning to do it better.

Re: Naked Mole Rat’s Longevity Gene Gives Mice a Longer Life

#35

Post by clarionbell »

dghughes wrote: post #31
ben_w wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Isn't there a concept similar to "no free lunch" in biology? Not really, no. There are examples of complex multicellular animal life with negligible senescence: some species of tortoises, of sturgeon, naked mole-rats — they don't die "of old age", only by illness and violence. But even if there was no free lunch, we might just be able to pay the price in a way that evolution can't; I'd be very surprised if we could…

Lobsters too. But they urinate from their eyes so it's a trade off.

otoh they have a shell so...

Re: Naked Mole Rat’s Longevity Gene Gives Mice a Longer Life

#36

Post by az226 »

code51 wrote: post #7

I don't quite understand the premise of longevity research. Isn't there a concept similar to "no free lunch" in biology? Infinite, cancer-free lives sounds just too good to be true. Something sounds off about that.

The consequence is a lopsided society where there are few young people and a population that continues to grow. Also, the meaning of young will evolve. To combat this having a child becomes something of an ultra rare privilege, like a green card lottery. Most people don’t get to have one. Because of this, becoming a grandparent because a statistical anomaly. You might think if you get to live so long, you’ll become a great great great great grandparent or something but actually the opposite. Family traditions disappear. When you’re not allowed to have kids and become a family, the dynamics of relationships between men and women change drastically.

With no deaths, wealth concentration grows to the extreme. A handful of people get to control the entire world. And most of those people are strange, so the fate of civilization rests on the off chance that they allow regular people to live a good life.

Society as we know it will be unrecognizable in that future. Whether it’s a utopia or dystopia, I think it’s neither, but does sound a bit dystopian.

So yeah, that’s not a free lunch.

Re: Naked Mole Rat’s Longevity Gene Gives Mice a Longer Life

#37

Post by keepamovin »

az226 wrote: post #36
code51 wrote: post #7

I don't quite understand the premise of longevity research. Isn't there a concept similar to "no free lunch" in biology? Infinite, cancer-free lives sounds just too good to be true. Something sounds off about that.

The consequence is a lopsided society where there are few young people and a population that continues to grow. Also, the meaning of young will evolve. To combat this having a child becomes something of an ultra rare privilege, like a green card lottery. Most people don’t get to have one. Because of this, becoming a grandparent because a statistical anomaly. You might think if you get to live so long, you’ll become a…

I don't think we know what happens when this is achieved, but it is fun to speculate. I'm sure what you lay out is one of many possible futures.

Re: Naked Mole Rat’s Longevity Gene Gives Mice a Longer Life

#38

Post by neom »

bartman wrote: post #26
bathtub365 wrote: post #3

Anyone else envious of mice always being on the cutting edge of science?

As a pet rat owner of over 8 years, medical research on rodents actually rarely results in benefits for pets of that species. The main advantage we have found so far is that drug studies done on rats can serve as a reference for safe and potentially effective dosages, as there's very little veterinary literature on rodent care otherwise. All meds for rats are typically repurposed cat, dog or human meds and determinin…

Came here to say the exact same thing, I'd love for my rats to live even 6 years, I always find it a little disappointing so much research is done on them yet they still live such a short amount of time. I suppose a heart that beats at 320bpm doesn't help...

Also: much love to my fellow ratto parents out there, best pet on earth imo.

Re: Naked Mole Rat’s Longevity Gene Gives Mice a Longer Life

#39

Post by Aaargh20318 »

code51 wrote: post #7

I don't quite understand the premise of longevity research. Isn't there a concept similar to "no free lunch" in biology? Infinite, cancer-free lives sounds just too good to be true. Something sounds off about that.

Why would there be? In the end we're just biological machines, albeit very complex ones. We're made of physical matter arranged in a specific way, physical matter can be manipulated. This means that if a biological machine is damaged or wears out, there is nothing that fundamentally prevent us from repairing it. The only thing that is needed is a proper understanding of how things are supposed to work, i.e. the desired working state, and the tooling to perform the repairs.

Re: Naked Mole Rat’s Longevity Gene Gives Mice a Longer Life

#40

Post by ben_w »

dghughes wrote: post #31
ben_w wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Isn't there a concept similar to "no free lunch" in biology? Not really, no. There are examples of complex multicellular animal life with negligible senescence: some species of tortoises, of sturgeon, naked mole-rats — they don't die "of old age", only by illness and violence. But even if there was no free lunch, we might just be able to pay the price in a way that evolution can't; I'd be very surprised if we could…

Lobsters too. But they urinate from their eyes so it's a trade off.

That's probably going to be a stretch goal for a crowd-funded biohacker at some point in the next decade.
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