

Root molecular cause of declining health in the old found by scientists - bootload
http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-02-root-molecular-declining-health-scientists.html

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bootload
From the article:

 _".. The scientists found that the basic cause of age-related health decline
is malfunctioning telomeres — the end caps on cells’ chromosomes that protect
them against DNA damage ... DePinho published a study in Nature in January
2011 that demonstrated it was possible to reverse the symptoms of extreme
aging in mice by increasing their levels of telomerase, the enzyme that
maintains the health of the telomeres ..."_

A bit late. Elizabeth Blackburn won the nobel prize for physiology in medicine
2009 for ...

 _"... The trio has been credited with creating a new field of science, with
their investigation of chromosomes and the discovery of an enzyme which they
named Telomerase. Telomerase is almost like an anti-ageing solution - it is
critical to the regeneration of cells, which are the building blocks of life.
If cells cannot replenish, humans are more prone to disease. ..."_ ~
<http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/10/05/2705473.htm>

~~~
stcredzero
Also, mice do not suppress their telomerase. Without telomerase, tumors have a
hard time getting larger than a golf ball. This is why large mammals like
humans actually suppress telomerase expression in most cells. We might survive
a golf ball sized tumor. A mouse? No way! There's no value in a mouse
suppressing telomerase, so they're designed to have it switched on all the
time.

Would we want our telomerase to be switched on all the time? This would
probably make us abnormally prone to developing cancer.

This is also why whalers find tumor scars in whales all the time, but never
run across whales that are going die of cancer. It's hard for a tumor to get
larger than the size of your head. For us, this would likely be fatal. For a
whale, it's no big deal.

~~~
TheEzEzz
That is an interesting trade off.

Still good new though, in my opinion. Cancer seems much more tractable than
aging. If we can reduce the problem of aging to something that only requires
us to additionally solve cancer, I would be ecstatic.

~~~
siganakis
One of the things that cancer is good at is switching "on" telomerase
(enabling the cancer to spread), so naturally working out how to switch "off"
telomerase in cancer tumors has actually been one of the key vectors in cancer
research.

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reasonattlm
The popular press pieces are, as usual, breathlessly overhyped. Some
commentary on this:

[http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2011/02/another-
proposed-...](http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2011/02/another-proposed-
link-between-short-telomeres-and-dysfunctional-mitochondria.php)

"it is certainly the case that damaged mitochondria and shortening telomeres
are only two of the possible reasons we suffer age-related degeneration. Many
of the other causes of aging involve a build up of varying forms of damaging
waste product that the body cannot remove - mechanisms which are quite capable
of causing disability and death on their own, telomere shortening or no
telomere shortening.

"That said, telomeres, mitochondria, and p53 are all large and healthy areas
of research when it comes to the biology of aging. I imagine that anyone would
be pleased to produce good evidence that might mechanically tie them all
together, such that one or more are secondary effects rather than primary
causes. From an economic perspective, we should all be hoping that some of our
present candidates for the primary causes of aging turn out to be secondary
effects - because then we don't have to devote any time towards developing
repair biotechnologies to fix them.

"On a closer reading of the new research, I have to say that it looks to me
very much like an independent confirmation of discoveries from 2007 and 2008
relating to mitochondrial damage, telomere length, and the enzyme telomerase.
In a nutshell, it may be that telomere shortening is entirely driven by
mitochondrial dysfunction"

Etc. Links to more in the post.

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bluekeybox
Don't see anything new in the press release. Everything it states has been
known for several years at least.

Wish there was a link to the original study, but all links are either
advertisements or internal links. The harvard.edu on the bottom does no good.
What is the point of such press releases?

~~~
hartror
They even gave a Nobel prize for the basis of this work like a year or two
back.

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mindcrime
Interesting stuff. I know it's just a small step, but it makes you wonder if
maybe good ole Ray Kurzweil is onto something with his talk about achieving
immortality.

Which leads to some interesting questions... if there was a drug available
that would let you live to be hundreds or thousands of years old, barring
accident, would you take it? What would be the effect on society if death were
all but eliminated? Would our population quickly overrun the limits of Earth's
resources?

Thinking about this almost feels like an episode of The Twilight Zone.

~~~
flipside
A cure for aging terrifies me, my gut tells me that it would be the end of
homo sapiens.

Think about it, do you really think all higher order life has this "defect"
for no reason? Without aging, the youth would be at an eternal disadvantage in
society. The rush to have children would all but disappear without a
biological clock. Evolutionarily speaking, a cure for aging is a dead end.

That said, i could easily see it happening, so like I said, I'm terrified.

~~~
jamii
I think by the point that we can banish aging technological self-improvement
will have overtaken evolution by a long way. We already severely handicap
evolution by using medicine to compensate for disadvantageous features such as
short-sigtedness.

~~~
eru
We just alter the criteria for selection. Evolution is still there.

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SoftwareMaven
So is the "news" here that the telomeres are the root cause rather than a
contributing cause? I'm not seeing anything else I didn't know.

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lincolnpark
Oh no! singularity is playin itself out

