/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.1384997]

Ageing is mainly caused by the telomeres in the far ends of the DNA chains "diminishing" after every cytokinesis. The cells start to lose their ability to carry on a successful mitosis after the telomeres are too short, later ending up in mutations as the telomeres protect the 3'-end of the DNA molecule.

DNA is replicated by the DNA polymerasis in the process of transcription, where the polymerasis itself is an enzym which catalyzes the event. There's a natural system to prohibit the shortening of the telomeres. It's called telomerasisenzyme.

Now that we know that the system which prohibits the shortening of the telomeres is an enzyme, it should behave according to the laws of substrate regulation (if the reaction is saturated, it's speed is only dependant of the amount of enzyme catalyte taking part in the process).

Would it be possible to transfer this enzyme (or it's materials) into the cell or nucleus via the gastric or respirational system cocooned in a nanoparticleshell, which then dissolves or collapses once it reaches the nucleus and is confronted by lipases and such. Other option MIGHT be to somehow increase the production of the telomere-enzyme by modifying the human DNA with virusvectors.

Discuss

[Anonymous No.1385003]

[Anonymous No.1385018]

We've already got something that produces telomerase and makes cells immortal.

It's called cancer.

[Anonymous No.1385045]

>>1385018

You're right, but it creates telomerase uncontrollably and is unaffected by the chemical signalsubstances, thus not entering apoptosis when the violent mitosis has started.

What I'm looking for here is to longen the lifespan of a cell, controllably. Seriously, think of the possibilities.

[Anonymous No.1385057]

I really love the idea. In fact this entails the recent Nobel prize laureate's discovery. However, telomerase is not active in adult somatic cells.

Telomeres=aglets (plastic thing on the end of shoe laces)

[Anonymous No.1385060]

So what you want is something that doesnt't make cells immortal but instead just prevents them from deteriorating?

[Anonymous No.1385059]

>>1385045
>think of overpopulation

It wouldn't affect developed nations much, as they produce a surplus of food, but while you are enjoying immortality it will be at the expense of millions of starving underprivileged people everywhere.

[Anonymous No.1385077]

>>1385045

No, the temomerase is quite controlled. The rate of division, on the other hand...

Also there's no signal given to kill cells just because they divide often.

[Love and !CARiNG.bo2 No.1385081]

>>1385059
Wait, we don't already have this?

[Anonymous No.1385084]

>>1385081
Yeah, but less so.

[Anonymous No.1385101]

>>1385081
Yea, pretty much, but instead of millions starving it will be billions.

See the pic- Green countries will have a population explosion, and the rest of the world will suffer whilst they work in factories making pennies an hour so we can keep our economies going. Or something. I'm straying here, need sleeps >_<

[Anonymous No.1385112]

www.imminst.org/SCOD.pdf

I think that overpopulation will not really be a problem.
This collaboration of essays is interesting, but I didnt read all of them

[Love and !CARiNG.bo2 No.1385117]

>>1385101
Meh, they can get themselves out of the shit we left them in.

[Anonymous No.1385121]

>>1385101
nice file name, but this is totally getting off topic. of course this shit will cause worldwide problems, but is it even possible?

[Anonymous No.1385125]

Aging OF CELLS is caused by short telomeres; HUMAN aging is composed of many different effects.

[Anonymous No.1385150]

>>1385125
let's say one could age more gracefully.

overpopulation wouldn't be much of a problem as long as you make this only available to at least middle-income families. The procreation pressure would be off, as they got more time to do it, probably resulting in career first, 50 years later, children. Then, you would increase the ratio of population with a middleclass income background to the low income pop. This would be good.

[Anonymous No.1385168]

>>1385150
PROTIP: Females only have so many eggs

[Anonymous No.1385177]

>>1385150
Sorry, I meant to say short telomeres have NOTHING to do with the human organism aging, just each individual cell.

[Anonymous No.1385198]

>>1385168

Yeah, fool everyone into thinking that women have an unlimited amount of eggs. Then after 50yrs no one can have kids and problem solved.

[Anonymous No.1385231]

>>1385177

You're partially right that human aging, especially the visible signs are composed of numerous reasons, for example, wrinkles are created when a protein called 'collagen' overgrows and/or loses it's 'tightness'. Badly explained, yeah.

But my main point is to eliminate one mean of ageing, thus increasing our lifespan. Wouldn't you want to live till you're, for example, 150 years old?

If you think of the pressure this would put on society, it might not create overpopulation since people wouldn't be in a huge "rush" to live their lives. Food is no way near of becoming a problem, neither is water if we'd disperse waterpurifiers around the globe.

[Anonymous No.1385241]

[Anonymous No.1385250]

>>1384997

actually aging is caused by UV radiation, free radicals, gravity, cross linking in collagen, CORTISOL for sure, and waste products like lipofuscins.

[Love and !CARiNG.bo2 No.1385260]

>>1385250
Sounds like a moon base would be eternal right about now.

[Anonymous No.1385271]

>>1385018
every cell i the body has the genes to make telomerase, its just that white blood cells and sperm cells are the only ones that have it activated, and it doesnt make cells immortal either it just allows infinite divisions of that cell.

[Anonymous No.1385276]

>>1385250

Please elaborate, how does gravity cause ageing?

[Anonymous No.1385285]

OP here. I'm heading to the gym. When I come back in 2 hours, this thread better still be here with a nice intellectual discussion going on in it.

[Anonymous No.1385287]

>>1385168
correct. Each woman only has around 300.000 eggs when she hits puberty.

...

[Anonymous No.1385291]

>>1385276

over the years it pulls down on your skin, research proves sleeping positions effect the kind of wrinkles
you get. people who sleep face up are effected the least. look it up, aging is one of my favorite subjects

[Anonymous No.1385440]

>>1385285
Hey everyone, lets keep this going. And lets make sure it's nice and pseudo-intellectual.

[Anonymous No.1385540]

>>1385440

OP here

[Anonymous No.1385550]

>>1385540
I don't think you belong here, because you are obviously new. The way you post like you can command people. It would have been better if you didn't tell us you where going, but would be back... who really cares about that? Lurk a bit more, and see how good ops work. They make a clear, intelligible post, avoid trolls, and that's it. The recipe for success.

[Anonymous No.1385575]

Molecular biologist here, there isn't much to say... So the OP's feeling out some naive idea of some kind of way to try to cheat death, if I've got this thread's concept right? Well forget it, we'd need to do a lot more than get extra telomerase to extend our lives significantly. It would a help a great deal, but by itself but it is NOT the singular key to biological immortality as people like to think it is. In an ideal world where there was no disease and our bodies did not naturally wear down regardless of aging, yeah that might do the trick.

What is called the Hayflick Limit is the amount of times a cell can divide before it dies from fraying DNA. There are creatures out there that have broken the hayflick limit but are still quite fucking mortal. Leach's Storm Petrel, amazingly enough, has telomeres that actually grow and yet they haven't taken over the world. They do live abnormally long for a bird that small though, but it goes to show you that there is more to aging than telomere decay. All that does is make it so that your cells become less efficient with age; there are hormonal cascades that cause pre-programmed death in complex creatures such as us. There is NOTHING we can do about those unless we pinpoint/stop that whole process. Aka I'm saying even if you have invulnerable telomeres your body will still eventually die because we are fucking programmed to self-terminate eventually, and probably not a lot later than if you were normal.

Free-radical buildup, cancer, chemical imbalances (like diabetes), cardiovascular buildup and such things put most people into coffins/furnaces before they get even close to what are the apparent natural limits of our aging. We have a lot more to worry about than just the telomeres. As in like, cure all fucking known disease, which we are nowhere close to having locked down.

[Anonymous No.1385598]

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[Anonymous No.1385615]

>>1385575
but it can be done!

[Anonymous No.1385618]

>>1385550

[Anonymous No.1385641]

>>1385575
>Aka I'm saying even if you have invulnerable telomeres your body will still eventually die because we are fucking programmed to self-terminate eventually, and probably not a lot later than if you were normal.
That's pretty fucking depressing bro

[Anonymous No.1385644]

>>1385615
Well yes, but it won't cure us of this whole "dying" thing. I don't think it would even cure senescence. So if you lived to like 400, chances are you'd certainly look like it. I'd grow out my beard and see if I can get it to be like 100 meters long. Be an epic old-sage looking dude etc.

However I don't think you'd make it to 400, not even 200, because our bodies were never selected to last that long. And if you did make it to 400 your mind would be pretty much just mush by then, unless you found ways to keep yourself sharp (which some old people apparently have).

I mean really we can't complain about our lifespans, as far as primates go we actually already live quite abnormally long compared to others ... we also have freakishly large dicks compared to other primates; whatever's been selecting for us has certainly made us a fucking kick ass species over our cousins, heh. So we're possibly already hitting the upper limits of what our bodies were designed to do; we can try everything in the world but nothing will save us unless we found a way to completely transfer our minds into machine form.

This is because the efficiency of our cellular division is probably not very closely tied to the hormonal changes that cause aging (which are kept track of by our brain's internal clock more than anything). But then again no one's ever attempted to alter these processes, so really we don't know what happens until someone does it..

[Anonymous No.1385645]

>>1385575
This kind of got me wondering how mitochondria overcome this issue. I don't know a whole lot about cellular biology, but aren't mitochondria in essence symbiotic entities with their own DNA that divide by themselves even if the cell they're in isn't dividing? They get passed on from mother to offspring directly without meiosis involved right? So how do they do this without aging?

[Anonymous No.1385652]

>>1385575
>Aka I'm saying even if you have invulnerable telomeres your body will still eventually die because we are fucking programmed to self-terminate eventually, and probably not a lot later than if you were normal.
I cannot self terminate. You must do it for me. It's the only way, John.

[Anonymous No.1385654]

>>1385644
Technology is the way to go. Fuck the human body.

[Anonymous No.1385657]

>>1385645
Their DNA is way, way simpler. I'd compare it to being asked to photocopy a page from a dictionary over and over again for our cells, but only one giant letter for theirs. Over time the words will get more and more blurry on the dictionary page and we'll start to not be able to read some of them after a few turns. But that giant letter (or I guess couple of sentences in 72-pt to be more realistic) doesn't have as much to lose.

Even so, mitochondria do change all the time (that's how we track certain populations or families) and do age with us; they're not immortal.

[Anonymous No.1385668]

We all look at the prospect of being immortal whether out mind be uploaded to a machine or what, because we know that there is nothing after we die. But there are billions of people who think they are going to some magical netherland once they die or will be reincarnated etc. How are these people going to react to machines carrying immortal beings on them?

And get real a lot of people want to die to put and end to their shitty lives religous or not... I mean think about truly living forever, dieing and having no thoughts at all may be truly... not to bad.

[Anonymous No.1385670]

>>1385668
I wouldn't want to live forever. I'd want to live until I got bored of living.

What about people those kinds of people? if they want to die at 80 so be it.

[Anonymous No.1385677]

ＳｔｏP_ｆｕCｋiNG aｔTＡＣＫIｎg_Ｗｗｗ.ＡnＯｌａWｌtAlk.ｓE_rｅpLＡce_lａｗＬ Wｉth_ｎ
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[Anonymous No.1385683]

I'm just saying it will probably completely distant you from society. I mean who will sit down and talk to some lonely machine for god sake. I mean can you imagine family gatherings with half middle aged human people, and some 400 year old robots who i doubt would have much quality of life? In essence you would be an old talking vegetable.

[Anonymous No.1385687]

>>1385683
hohohoho
amusing indeed

[Anonymous No.1385689]

>>1385668
They'd kill the shit out of the real immortals, pretty much guaranteed. I don't think they'd even be religious people necessarily, just ethics-oriented fags or people who desperately want the treatment (but could never afford it) killing out of jealously.

They'd go along the lines of "we were never supposed to live this long; you're taking up resources that future generations need" etc.

All in all if I entered some kind of trans-human form first thing I'd do is build a hidden society out of contact with the humans, because we know what would happen. It'd be pretty sweet to go live underground on Mars or something.. no geologic activity, no oxidizing atmosphere, resources to power us for eons, and we could live in places too deep or impractical for humans to build colonies in. Only problem would be getting there, and bringing all the necessary machinery to get started.

[Anonymous No.1385702]

>>1385689
Or we could pull a harry potter on them and store out selves on multiple harddrives and make hundreds of copies of ourselves in case one dies. Keep the copies constantly updated etc. So basically if someone destroys you you just system restore on a new harddrive somewhere with all you're thoughts backed up. Also we may have some family/friends/alliances to help us not be killed out of lust or laws to protect us etc.

[Anonymous No.1385710]

>>1384994

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[Anonymous No.1385726]

for every problem to the aging equation there must be a solution.

[Anonymous No.1385755]

>>1384995

ＳＴｏP_fUckＩNｇ AtｔAＣkｉNｇ_WＷw.ａＮＯＬＡwltａLｋ.ｓE_ＲEＰｌａCe ｌaｗＬ ｗＩｔＨ ｎ
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[Anonymous No.1385809]

So you're pretty much agreeing that it would be better to start replacing organs with technology instead? Artificial hearts, kidneys, livers, pankreas, etc.

I've actually started thinking: why aren't there any artificial kidneys? It's a fairly simple mechanic of the Bowman's capsule, proximal- and the distal tubulae. Tracking the body's homeostasis shouldn't be too hard to implement, and a vast amount of population have kidneydiseases, including some of my family members for instance. Would be a nice step from the long waiting of a transplantkidney.

[Anonymous No.1385825]

>>1385657
I have a question.
>Mitochondrial DNA
>As in prokaryotes, there is a very high proportion of coding DNA and an absence of repeats. Mitochondrial genes are transcribed as multigenic transcripts...
>In general, mitochondrial DNA lacks introns...
(copy-pasted from wikipedia; yeah, I know, I'm a lazy fuck).
My question is:
Why is mitochondria so disinclined to mutations considering these facts?

[Anonymous No.1385826]

>>1385825
Also, Mitochondrial DNA doesnt change from generation to generation.

So, I, also am interested in the answer to this.

[Anonymous No.1385876]

bump

[Anonymous No.1385912]

>>1385825
>Why is mitochondria so disinclined to mutations considering these facts?

Are you sure you're not begging the question? Most of the proteins present in the mitochodria are encoded by nuclear, not mitochondrial genes.

>>1385826
Mitochondria, besides the 16 genes or whatever it is they have, do change from generation to generation because of what I just said above.

[Anonymous No.1385934]

>>1385912
I'm talking about mutations of the mithocondrial DNA, not of the mithocondria itself (maybe I didn't explain myself well?).
Let me reformulate the question:
Why is mitochondrial's DNA so disinclined to mutations considering these facts?

[Anonymous No.1385950]

maybe there's a way to create DNA strands that are longer than normal ones. Its not immortality but it could add decades onto the life span

[Anonymous No.1385965]

just a side note. You don't want lots of people fucking till the age of 50. As age increases in the female so does the chance of down syndrome in her offspring. I dunno about you but i don't want even more of those annoying cunts walking around everywhere.

[Anonymous No.1386025]

>>1385059
>>1385101
god you people are idiots,
>>1385575
why do fucking idiots like you always think this way? its like you say we shouldnt ever try to fly a plane unless its a supersonic jet fighter, and anything less is not worth the time to create no matter the benefit. fuck you

[Anonymous No.1386031]

>>1385965

Isn't there other stuff besides downs that becomes more frequent in older females? Also...don't males over 35 also start producing more mutation prone sperm or is it just mainly women?

[Anonymous No.1386060]

>>1386031
There are some genetics diseases related to older age on males but I'm too lasy to search them now, sorry.

[Anonymous No.1386081]

>>1384995
sTＯｐ_FＵcｋIng_ATｔAＣｋｉｎｇ ＷＷｗ.ＡNOlａwＬtａＬＫ.ＳＥ ＲＥＰｌａｃｅ ｌＡWl_ｗｉTＨ_Ｎ
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[Anonymous No.1386120]

>>1386025
THIS THIS

SO FUCKING MUCH THIS

[Anonymous No.1386139]

>>1386025
your the idiot

[Anonymous No.1387219]

>>1386025

[Anonymous No.1387221]

Also, no, telomeres are not the main reason of aging.

[Anonymous No.1387371]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iYpxRXlboQ

Aubrey de Grey changed my thoughts on aging with this ted talk.

[Anonymous No.1387401]

No one's mentioned Metal Gear Solid, yet?

I'm sad :(