http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature09603.html
The article is interesting because it shows that there actually may be some way to reverse the effects of aging. It is known that every time a cell divides the ends of the chromosomes, called telomeres, shorten. After many divisions, the telomeres become so short that the cell stops dividing and dies. This is the reason for aging.
Scientists at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston wanted to test if the reactivation of the enzyme telomerase could reverse the damaging effects of aging. They purposefully engineered mice with telomere dysfunction and inactive telomerase. In their adult years, the mice had atrophied organs and smaller brains than normal mice. Just four weeks after the telomerase was reactivated the mice, new brain cells were developing and tissues in the atrophied organs began to regenerate. This is a major breakthrough and may lead scientists to develop some kind of medicine to help reverse multi-system degeneration.
This is so cool! The consequences of this for people with premature aging and certain diseases like progeria will be phenomenal! There are also ethical dilemmas: will people be able to buy youth?
ReplyDeleteThis is an interesting concept. I wonder how the mechanism differs from that of cancer cells which also take advantage of telomere function in cell division. Cancer cells also use telomerase to maintain telomeres, yielding to uncontrolled cell division and in turn immortal cancerous cells. Seems a bit concerning that we are talking about the same process to reverse aging. Hope we don't give rise to even more opportunities for malignant cells to proliferate uncontrollably.
ReplyDeleteIts interesting as katelyn said if we reactivate enzyme telomerase and somehow imbue that with the immortality effects of cancer cells we may come up with an opportunity to were humans can never die because cancer cell effects will keep the activation of telomerase !!! We can still die if we get manually killed. Of course problems will arise if it is readily available like over population, lack of food, etc. More than likely world leaders would be the only ones who will have access for increasing life span or be hidden as an area 51 secret. Perhaps Castro already knows about this technology (just kidding). I am curious though if an 80 year old takes it I see internally he will regenerated and perhaps wrinkles decreased but not turn into a 20 year old cosmetically wise more towards 40 since the body already created pathways that wouldn't be seen in a younger age.
ReplyDeleteThis is really interesting but I had the same concerns as Katelyn. I heard that the injection of telomerases causes the cell to uncontrollably contiue to divide, which causes cancer. However, I feel if they continue studing and performing tests they could find a point of moderation where they could revitalize any organs damged due to age without the negative effects of possible getting cancer from the reactivation of telomerase.
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