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Scientists successfully activate human telomerase

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Re: Scientists successfully activate human telomerase

#2
This is extremely interesting, I wonder if serious breakthroughs in human longevity are on the near horizon. Directly related to this article, it turns out exercising probably keeps your telomeres "young" too: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/27/phys-ed-how-exercis...

Re: Scientists successfully activate human telomerase

#3
Layperson's explanation - this is a pretty important step to stopping aging in human beings. Telomerase lengthens telomeres, which are end-caps on DNA strands that are slowly whittled away as cells divide; without functioning telomerase human cells can only divide a finite amount of times before dying.

Re: Scientists successfully activate human telomerase

#4
TL;DR

They used a telomerase activator to improve the immune system of CMV and HIV positive individuals. It worked.

"Chronic viral infections such as cytomegalovirus (CMV) and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) accelerate telomere loss and premature aging of the immune system, especially the virus-specific cytotoxic T cells31–36 responsible for killing infected cells."

Re: Scientists successfully activate human telomerase

#5
post #3

Layperson's explanation - this is a pretty important step to stopping aging in human beings. Telomerase lengthens telomeres, which are end-caps on DNA strands that are slowly whittled away as cells divide; without functioning telomerase human cells can only divide a finite amount of times before dying.

Also, telomeres are largely an anti-cancer defence mechanism, like a surprisingly large number of other things that your cells do all day. When a person 'gets cancer', this just means that one of the many, many potential cancers they've had, slipped through all the defences and got out of hand.

At a cellular level, the opposite of ageing isn't longevity, it's cancer.

Re: Scientists successfully activate human telomerase

#6

This is extremely interesting, I wonder if serious breakthroughs in human longevity are on the near horizon. Directly related to this article, it turns out exercising probably keeps your telomeres "young" too: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/27/phys-ed-how-exercis...

It would be interesting to know whether amount of exercise is correlated with telomere length within the active group.

Re: Scientists successfully activate human telomerase

#8
post #4

TL;DR They used a telomerase activator to improve the immune system of CMV and HIV positive individuals. It worked. "Chronic viral infections such as cytomegalovirus (CMV) and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) accelerate telomere loss and premature aging of the immune system, especially the virus-specific cytotoxic T cells31–36 responsible for killing infected cells."

Referring to cytomegalovirus as herpes is misleading. Herpes is both the name of a single virus and a family of viruses. What is commonly known as the herpes virus is Herpes simplex viruses 1 and 2. Cytomegalovirus is a herpes virus; that is, a member of the Herpesviridae virus family.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytomegalovirus

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herpes_simplex_virus

Re: Scientists successfully activate human telomerase

#10
post #8
post #4

TL;DR They used a telomerase activator to improve the immune system of CMV and HIV positive individuals. It worked. "Chronic viral infections such as cytomegalovirus (CMV) and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) accelerate telomere loss and premature aging of the immune system, especially the virus-specific cytotoxic T cells31–36 responsible for killing infected cells."

Referring to cytomegalovirus as herpes is misleading. Herpes is both the name of a single virus and a family of viruses. What is commonly known as the herpes virus is Herpes simplex viruses 1 and 2. Cytomegalovirus is a herpes virus; that is, a member of the Herpesviridae virus family. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytomegalovirus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herpes_simplex_virus

You are right, fixed it.
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