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Key Step In Programmed Cell Death Discovered
Investigators at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital have discovered a dance of proteins that protects certain cells from undergoing apoptosis, also known as programmed cell death. Understanding the fine points of apoptosis is important to researchers seeking ways to control this process. In a series of experiments, St. Jude researchers found that if any one of three molecules is missing, certain cells lose the ability to protect themselves from apoptosis. A report on this work appears in the advance online publication of Nature.
I for one welcome our dancing protein overlords.
I wonder if they could trigger apoptosis in cancer cells? That would be very cool
So can I be exposed to these three molecules in such a way that my immune system makes antibodies for them? Would be nice to be immunized against death.
Shh.
probably for only the rich & powerful, us unwashed masses wont get it, and if we do it will be available after i die of old age or some terrible disease...
with over 6 billion people on earth just think if everyone got immortality and everyone making babies soon earth will be standing room only - yowsa!!!
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Where is the mod for -1 overfilled crackpipe? That was the biggest load of jibber jabber since time cube.
What if Tetris was invented by Nazis?
The proteins identified in the paper protect against apoptosis. If you were to inhibit them, your cells would be more susceptible to apoptosis, not more resistant (which they show using a knockout mouse). More importantly though, apoptosis is an essential process in both development and regulation (particularly the immune response). Indiscriminately inhibiting the apoptotic process would be detrimental to the organism as a whole (resulting in death, not the protection from).
Let's say your body produced neutralizing antibodies to the three proteins (or better yet, you inject humanized antibodies that targeted the proteins), the antibodies would still have to penetrate the cell in order to see their target. You would be much better off making a tat-fusion protein of a dominant-negative form of the protein.
Lastly, we've already identified several molecules that are important for apoptosis. One catagory of such proteins is call the Caspases.
The actual abstract and article can be found on Nature's website and is entitled Hax1-mediated processing of HtrA2 by Parl allows survival of lymphocytes and neurons. Essentially what the researchers showed was that the gene Hax1 keeps cells alive when they aren't being stimulated with survival signals. This is interesting, for example, because cancer metastasis cells must survive in very foreign environments where they probably aren't receiving these factors. On the flip side, deficiencies in Hax1 results in blood cells dying early, causing a disease called severe congenital neutropenia.
There are four general situations where apoptosis is medically interesting. This particular result increases our understanding of apoptsis generally, so is potentially relevant to all of them:
a) Cancer. This is the big one. Your body has a natural defense against cancer - cells that would become cancerous undergo apoptosis and die. Only when this defense fails do you actually get cancer.
b) Viral Infections. Viruses (and a few bacteria, but it's not the same thing) get inside the individual cells of your body and take them over to make viruses. Again, your body defends itself by inducing apoptosis in affected cells - the virus will typically contain genes to try and prevent this.
c) Some degenerative diseases result from apoptosis being triggerred improperly in certain cells (Parkinsons' disease probably works this way.)
d) Aptoptosis plays a major role in normal human development; if this goes wrong, this may cause certain development defects.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
I think "The Safety Dance" would be more appropriate here....
That was the biggest load of jibber jabber since time cube.
Perhaps, once you've become immortal, you'll live long enough to understand the time cube. Foolish mortals!
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
That's why I always thought the most successful treatments would be the ones that somehow exerted selective pressure to favor the weaker cells - those most vulnerable to a particular treatment, for example.
Failing that, an "ensemble method" is probably the way to go, since cells that survive that would have to be immune to the intersection of every treatment you're throwing at them.
Another idea that avoids the selectivity problem is to use things that cause cancerous cells to differentiate, rather than killing them off - that's what makes ATRA such a great therapy for acute promyelocytic leukemia, for example. Those sorts of things should probably become easier to find with advances in genetics and more targeted therapies. Other things that don't kill cancer cells but render them harmless, like angiogenesis inhibitors or telomerase antagonists, also offer promise, since either the cells are immune but can't complete the steps required for proliferation or they're not immune and are affected by the treatment (the problem is that cells sometimes have more than one way to do these things...).
(Disclaimer: IANAO)
Dr. Chojkier and lead author Martina Buck, Ph.D., of VA, UCSD and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, have described the steps by which tumor necrosis factor (TNF) alpha, an immune-system protein, prevents the production of albumin. Low levels of albumin, a critical protein made in the liver, is a keynote of wasting.
According to Dr. Chojkier, a gastroenterologist and liver specialist, antioxidants such as vitamin E might halt wasting in humans if these supplements were delivered in very high amounts-or even better, if they were targeted to the liver.Read it all here http://iamblogging.net/archives/2008/02/cancer_the_deat.html
"an infinite player that has lost his finite mind" ~Infinite Play the Movie (it blends with reality)
No, the flawed reasoning is in the original post. Don't know why I'm wasting time on this but anyway:
"My Proof for Immortality."
If you call that opinion piece a "proof", it's already evident you're not talking the same language as everyone else. I don't know what a "conceptual proof" is. If you mean "proof of concept", that implies you have evidence that the concept holds water.
You compare biology with "data":
"The human body is a data set. This data set is transferred repeatedly throughout life and it is the data representing the body that is persistent."
Explain how data representing the body is persistent? What data, do you mean DNA coding? Actual cells die and get replaced, so it can't be that. DNA is NOT persistent, as it can be damaged. So what data, exactly, is persistent? The entire "proof" revolves around attaching the biology to a concept of "data" ("The human body is a data set.") and if the poster can't be bothered establishing that introductory premise in logic, then you can't blame on us for not bothering to take him/her seriously.
".. because both the female and male genes combine producing a hybrid data set that contains the best features of both that were developed during their life spans genetic modifications."
This is exactly why we dismiss such prattle. Like any good politician or magician, words are used to make things sound feasible where, on anything closer than casual examination, they are revealed as bollocks. eg. Since genetic "defects" (congenital disease etc) are also passed along into this "hybrid data set" as it is so eloquently and technically described, it's hardly a result that anyone would call "the best features of both".
Basically, if even thinking about that post is a way to "evolve" one's mind, you'd best pin it up at the local zoo to get anything out of it.
Then there's this:
"The physical material of the body is not persistent; the data is persistent. A life term is only limited by the ability to replicate the data provided the life force or animation principal persists."
Ok, where does the "data" reside, if not in the physical material of the body? Is it not DNA which codes for the entire material body, aka its "data set"? But wait, DNA is material! So explain then, what you mean by "the data is persistent".
*What is the point* of throwing around a "theory" which:
a) misrepresents established scientific principles (challenging them is ok, misrepresenting them is not),
b) is internally inconsistent, or at the very best, full of large gaping holes in reasoning, and
c) uses technical language for no other purpose than to sound technical.
It's the same age-old approach used by snake oil salesmen and, more recently, "intelligent design".