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A New—and Reversible—Cause of Aging

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Re: A New—and Reversible—Cause of Aging

#81

Post by hughlomas »

simonsquiff wrote: post #69

One thing I'd really like to understand re: ageing is why a newborn is essentially 'reset' from an ageing perspective. I appreciate that egg cells aren't constantly dividing during a mothers life but they are still a product of division and contain DNA that can suffer from time based mutations. So if aging is due to mistakes accumulated during either divisions or time then why are children born young? I don't think t…

The organism is a vessel to propagate the genes. Germ cells such as embryos usually have additional defenses and repair mechanisms, such as for DNA damage, that the somatic cells lack. Since the soma are merely there to help the replication of the germ line, they receive less investment.

No creature we know of has successfully evolved the capability to permanently stave off aging. Besides the inevitable issues with fighting entropy in a complex system, how would an ageless organism compete in the shifting landscape of an ecosystem as other creatures evolve around it? How would a non-aging organism adapt? It seems likely that continually creating new generations is the best strategy for genetic replication.

Now we are at the amusing point that genes may have unwittingly experienced their own skynet event. Modern science has given us the ability to not only gaze upon our creators, but manipulate them to do the bidding of ideas.

Re: A New—and Reversible—Cause of Aging

#82

Post by simonsquiff »

hughlomas wrote: post #81
simonsquiff wrote: post #69

One thing I'd really like to understand re: ageing is why a newborn is essentially 'reset' from an ageing perspective. I appreciate that egg cells aren't constantly dividing during a mothers life but they are still a product of division and contain DNA that can suffer from time based mutations. So if aging is due to mistakes accumulated during either divisions or time then why are children born young? I don't think t…

The organism is a vessel to propagate the genes. Germ cells such as embryos usually have additional defenses and repair mechanisms, such as for DNA damage, that the somatic cells lack. Since the soma are merely there to help the replication of the germ line, they receive less investment. No creature we know of has successfully evolved the capability to permanently stave off aging. Besides the inevitable issues with f…

Thanks - germ cells was the key term I was missing, this section on the germline on Wikipedia answers my original question:

Germline cells are immortal, in the sense that they have reproduced indefinitely since the beginning of life. This is largely due to the activity of the enzyme known as telomerase. This enzyme extends the telomeres of the chromosome, preventing chromosome fusions and other negative effects of shortened telomeres. Most somatic cells, by comparison, can only divide around 30-50 times according to the Hayflick limit. Certain somatic cells, known as stem cells, also express telomerase and are potentially immortal.

Re: A New—and Reversible—Cause of Aging

#83

Post by krrrh »

buyx wrote: post #11
ChuckMcM wrote: post #5

Its a promising result, but a lot of mice experiments don't have the same effects on people. It would be ironic if this technique failed on humans subjected to a lot of exposure to botox :-) The fear is that suddenly not only would the rich get richer, but they would never die. That leads to some fairly depressing scenarios.

The political consequences will be interesting. One of the consolations if living under a tyrant is that they will, eventually die. I wonder if having Robert Mugabe around for another 40 years would excite Zimbabweans. The flip-side is that citizens could get more politically active if they couldn't rely on death to prevent gerontocracies.

Another interesting flipside might be that people become less willing to participate in a revolution for the sake of improving a few decades of their own lives and the lives of future generations when the risk of dying in a revolution means potentially giving up hundreds of years of one's own useful living.

Re: A New—and Reversible—Cause of Aging

#84

Post by nnq »

waps wrote: post #62
Retric wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that the risk of cancer goes down it's that all the other risks goes up. Remember really old people have a 50/50 chance of death per year risk and your cancer risk is lower than that. But long term even a 1 in 200 risk of death per year will still kill you. Anyway, I don't really see the problem with rich people living longer lives. Dynastic wealth still lingers around and ends up in the hands of incompetent…

This is a book about the tradeoffs (if you're God/Darwin) of death. Really, really interesting book : http://www.amazon.com/Sex-Origins-Death-William-Clark/dp/019... He first frames the problem. Firstly pointing out that not all parts of the human body are subject to death. Every cell in your body was alive 180000 years ago when the human race first emerged, and even 3 billion years ago when the first cells really st…

> Not creating the situation where cancer will eventually win is also a no-go, for other reasons.

What are these reasons?

Re: A New—and Reversible—Cause of Aging

#85

Post by ackydoodles »

jarradhope wrote: post #27
chunky1994 wrote: post #2

Here's a link to the newscientist article on the same discovery: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn24784-turning-back-tim... And the actual paper (the full paper is behind a paywall): http://www.cell.com/cell/abstract/S0092-8674(13)01521-3

Found paper: http://www.cnd.mcgill.ca/~ivan/age-reversing-compound.pdf

Thank-you for that. Reading now. So far it looks like good science.

Re: A New—and Reversible—Cause of Aging

#87

Post by agumonkey »

DigitalJack wrote: post #47
grok2 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think, it's not really that communication breaks down, it is more that you don't need to communicate at all because you know the other person so well by now. Then divorce happens because you don't like what you know or you realize your spouse isn't what you wanted, or the marriage becomes stronger because you anticipate your partners needs/actions without having to communicate. So yeah, the analogy is not really ri…

While it is true that you learn your spouse that well, it will be long before that when you realize if don't like them. However when you don't communicate, your lives get out of sync. At some point this has gone on long enough, the changes we go through (called life) cause people to become strangers again. It's like two inertial systems. They drift, differently, over time and this difference accumulates. Communicatio…

So I was supposed to be my parents GPS.

Re: A New—and Reversible—Cause of Aging

#88

Post by eli_gottlieb »

ggreer wrote: post #68
salimmadjd wrote: post #58

Anti-aging divide? I'm all for anti-aging, I was obsessed by it since my teens and got a degree in molecular biology thinking I want to dedicate my life to it, I even own dontage.com. However, I'm concerned about implications of potentially high-price anti-aging treatments. Till now, death has been the great equalizer. Life is inherently unfair. If you are born in poverty there is high chances you'll stay there, but…

There are many downsides to curing aging, but none of them are as bad as the current situation: 100,000 deaths every day. It's worse than you can imagine; those 100,000 people experienced decades of mental and physical decline before they died. I think you are confused about the economics of the situation. Who will pay for retirement benefits? Aging is why we retire. If we never got old, we could work as long as we w…

>I think you are confused about the economics of the situation. Who will pay for retirement benefits? Aging is why we retire. If we never got old, we could work as long as we wanted.

Completely backwards. "We're old and can't work anymore" is the excuse used to publicly justify finally being allowed not to work anymore in a Calvinist-capitalist culture. What we actually want is to minimize the portion of our lifespan spent working for mere wages.

Mind, one reason I've come to support anti-aging and automation advancements is davka that they force our culture to actually confront these issues, that they "heighten the contradictions" as we Marxists say, rather than pretending everything's fine and letting the system get away with its sins.

Re: A New—and Reversible—Cause of Aging

#89

Post by eli_gottlieb »

hughlomas wrote: post #81
simonsquiff wrote: post #69

One thing I'd really like to understand re: ageing is why a newborn is essentially 'reset' from an ageing perspective. I appreciate that egg cells aren't constantly dividing during a mothers life but they are still a product of division and contain DNA that can suffer from time based mutations. So if aging is due to mistakes accumulated during either divisions or time then why are children born young? I don't think t…

The organism is a vessel to propagate the genes. Germ cells such as embryos usually have additional defenses and repair mechanisms, such as for DNA damage, that the somatic cells lack. Since the soma are merely there to help the replication of the germ line, they receive less investment. No creature we know of has successfully evolved the capability to permanently stave off aging. Besides the inevitable issues with f…

>Now we are at the amusing point that genes may have unwittingly experienced their own skynet event. Modern science has given us the ability to not only gaze upon our creators, but manipulate them to do the bidding of ideas.

Come on, man. Laugh maniacally! You know you want to.

Here, I'll start: MUWWWWWAUAUAHAHAAHAHAHAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Re: A New—and Reversible—Cause of Aging

#90

Post by Houshalter »

simonsquiff wrote: post #82
hughlomas wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The organism is a vessel to propagate the genes. Germ cells such as embryos usually have additional defenses and repair mechanisms, such as for DNA damage, that the somatic cells lack. Since the soma are merely there to help the replication of the germ line, they receive less investment. No creature we know of has successfully evolved the capability to permanently stave off aging. Besides the inevitable issues with f…

Thanks - germ cells was the key term I was missing, this section on the germline on Wikipedia answers my original question: Germline cells are immortal, in the sense that they have reproduced indefinitely since the beginning of life. This is largely due to the activity of the enzyme known as telomerase. This enzyme extends the telomeres of the chromosome, preventing chromosome fusions and other negative effects of sh…

So then why can't we just inject ourselves with that enzyme and be immortal?
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