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Aging Discovery Yields Nobel Prize
An anonymous reader writes This year's Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is awarded to three scientists who have solved a major problem in biology: how the chromosomes can be copied in a complete way during cell divisions and how they are protected against degradation. The Nobel Laureates have shown that the solution is to be found in the ends of the chromosomes, called the telomeres, and in an enzyme that forms them."
It's great news however how are we going to solve the population crisis when the Earth gets too small?
I always knew I was going to be 512 years old before I die. :]
We need to remove the copy protection first, then there will be many.
So they've changed the chromosome code to encode data using a lossless codec instead of a lossy one. Terrific, now we have to put up with people moaning about the lack of FLAC encoding in their music AND genes.
Thanks a bunch, stupid scientists.
Summation 2
actually, the number of retiring people who are invalids is statistically insignificant when considering load on earth's resources. the major problem is people just like you. so if you could kindly "take one for the team", so to speak, and better yet snuff a couple of your friends before you check out, we the remaining population will be most grateful.
Yes, you can be immortal if you want. But part of the problem is that, in order to achieve immortality, you have to keep adding guanines to your telomeres. The problem with that, is that it gives you cancer,... ;-)
Better than being dead.
You really think so? I tend to think that there are certain fates that are worse than death.
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Can you imagine being immortal like Duncan, and being buried alive? Assuming the soil was to hard to be clawed through, it would be an awful way to spend an eternity.
Nothing is too hard to claw through given enough time.
I would settle for being put to death at 85 to keep population under control, if it meant my bones, mussels and organs didn't age. One of the worst thing about watching someone get old is to see their self reliance taken away and needing someone to help them into and out of the bath, change their diaper, feed them and put them to bed. THE worst thing is realizing someday it could and probably will happen to you.
It's sad but you start off with needing someone to look after you and that's how it ends, if you live that long.
Most normal cells do not divide frequently, therefore their chromosomes are not at risk of shortening and they do not require high telomerase activity. In contrast, cancer cells have the ability to divide infinitely and yet preserve their telomeres. How do they escape cellular senescence? One explanation became apparent with the finding that cancer cells often have increased telomerase activity. It was therefore proposed that cancer might be treated by eradicating telomerase. Several studies are underway in this area, including clinical trials evaluating vaccines directed against cells with elevated telomerase activity.
So Speak for yourself if you want to jump off a bridge at 85. I work with several incredibly bright people who are in their mid 70's who still travel the world. With the advent of information technology we can even do our work without being physically active, just a computer and internet access.
By the time I turn 85 in the 2050's, it will be the new 55! I'll race you to the top of the mountain.
That's the cycle. The baby boomers retire, the supporting population is to small to sustain them, the world gets flung into chaos for a few decades and/or we learn to deal, the boomers start dying off, there is another period of prosperity because the future generations have learned to be efficient, future generations slowly for get how to be efficient as it's no longer required to support a large aged population, future generations start having multitudes of children, cycle starts over.
New slashdot poll?
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Sorry for the reply to myself. If you have never read "I have no mouth, and I must scream", it is very applicable. It is a classic of the science fiction genre, and a well written dystopian story.
This is the only link I could find. I know I have seen it in others...
http://web.archive.org/web/20070227202043/http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/classics/classics_archive/ellison/ellison1.html
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For instance, being immortal but still aging.
I am officially gone from
Nobel prizes are never awarded for new work, they are awarded for work you did sufficiently far in the past that it has been extensively peer reviewed and tested and is now accepted as being one of the bits of scientific knowledge that everyone in the field knows. This one is being awarded for work originally published around 1980 (as it says in TFA). Others have now tested this the published results in sufficient detail that it is now something that almost everyone with any awareness of biology knows.
A Nobel Prize is not like a 'best paper in conference' award. You don't get it for new and exciting theories, you get it for theories that have withstood careful examination and testing. If the LHC finds a Higgs Boson then Peter Higgs will almost certainly get a Nobel, for the work that he did predicting it back in 1964.
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I was actually wondering how viral technology was evolving. I'm far from a biologist, so correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't we able to reverse engineer and create our own viruses in laboratories now? Doesn't a virus take over your cell and reprogram it with the code wrapped up in the virus itself? It starts making the cell pump out tons of new viruses which ultimately bursts the cell and kills it. How much more difficult would it be to create a virus with your DNA from saved blood at age 20 (say your 60 now), program it to hijack the cell and reprogram it with the new DNA? There would have to be a few modifications made, for example, making it invisible to your immune system, coding the virus to die after reprogramming the cell, etc. Then just fill up an IV and let them flow into your body. I'm sure there's a huge difference from the kind we can engineer versus the type I'm suggesting, but is it possible? Or would the temporary pause of cell function during the reprogramming phase kill you?
Yes, you can be immortal if you want. But part of the problem is that, in order to achieve immortality, you have to keep adding guanines to your telomeres. The problem with that, is that it gives you cancer,... ;-)
I think I would gladly take cancer if I was assured it was not going to kill me due to being immortal ;}