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Key Gene Found Responsible For Accelerated Aging and Cancer
First time accepted submitter gbrennan123 writes "Researchers at NYU School of Medicine have identified a single gene that simultaneously controls inflammation, accelerated aging and cancer. From the article: '"This was certainly an unexpected finding," said principal investigator Robert J. Schneider, PhD, the Albert Sabin Professor of Molecular Pathogenesis, associate director for translational research and co-director of the Breast Cancer Program at NYU Langone Medical Center. "It is rather uncommon for one gene to have two very different and very significant functions that tie together control of aging and inflammation. The two, if not regulated properly, can eventually lead to cancer development. It's an exciting scientific find."'"
a gene called AUF1 controls inflammation by turning off the inflammatory response to stop the onset of septic shock.
The new discovery, which they apparently discovered and will be shown when their paper is published, was that AUF1 also releases telomerase to repair telomeres.
The current study reveals that AUF1....also maintains the integrity of chromosomes by activating the enzyme telomerase to repair the ends of chromosomes
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I mean, this is a GREAT find, but we need drugs to be designed, tested and deployed.
So, when is this usable? in say 30 years?
I sure hope there is some way that cancer is gone in a couple of years, and then live slightly longer.
rm -rf --no-preserve-root /
how does one regulate aging?
Don't worry, this guy found it. Down with regulations!!
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Would someone be kind enough to post a link to the paper or at least its name?
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
It explains why I look 10 years younger and also have AS :/
Another article explaining the connection http://www.edoc.co.za/modules.php?name=News&file=print&sid=2390
how does one regulate aging?
Convince Republicans that it involves gays marrying.
Look where all this talking got us, baby.
I have to say that I agree with this sentiment. I'd much rather be me living now, than The Buddha himself, as I still get to breathe, etc.
Look where all this talking got us, baby.
I'm pretty sure I can find something interesting to do with the extra years. :p
By regulating the damage that's results as people get older. It's not the age that's generally the problem it's these processes that go on causing small amounts of damage over decades. Things like the telemeres shortening and eventually cutting into vital DNA during replication. And the damage that inflammation does to things like the cardiovascular system.
The question is what would Jim Morrison have accomplished had he not died at age 27. Unfortunately we'll never know, but that's really the question you should be answering. Presumably he would have put out at least one more album and done a few more shows.
Jesus is different, if you believe the Christian account he largely became a figure through death and resurrection.
The secret to a long life is actually very simple: Keep Breathing. That's all there is to it!
It is amazing how many people who say this, but waste their lives away watching TV and playing video games.
Obviously this sounds like an amazing and important discovery, perhaps the holy grail of cancer research.
Imagine a world where you just pop a pill and keep living as long as you want. Without additionally having drastic population control, that's going to doom us to a totally unsustainable world, if we don't have that already. But even with that unlikely flip-side, imagine a population that is just fixed at some point with the people it has right now, never dying, never having offspring. How creepy would that be?
Jut sayin' - food for thought (and maybe a sci-fi novel).
Jack Vance explored some of the social implications of selective immortality in his weird murder mystery. To Live Forever As I read about possible life extension breakthroughs in the news and contemplate the implications -- we really do seem to be getting somewhere -- I often catch myself thinking about this insightful lesser known work of the reclusive and gifted Mr. Vance.
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
Yeah, but that's how you can regulate anything.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
On the other hand, Shakyamuni Buddha lived into his 80s, Jean Manual Fangio only gave up professional motor racing in his 90s, and the Queen Mother was conducting human experiments on the effects of gin past the century mark.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Different things mean different things to different people. Who's to say someone watching TV and playing video games wasn't interesting to them? Or do we as a people dictate whether someone can have a greater life expectancy only if they are reasonably sure to do something perceived extraordinary by the general public?
how about TWO? Let's call them,... um... China and India.
Buddha didn't go to Nirvana when he died, the entire point is that he achieved enlightenment (got to Nirvana) while alive.
Perhaps Republicans really don't care about gay marriage and just want to be loud about something to distract you from seeing them robbing you blind?
On the other hand, Shakyamuni Buddha lived into his 80s, Jean Manual Fangio only gave up professional motor racing in his 90s, and the Queen Mother was conducting human experiments on the effects of gin past the century mark.
Fangio was born June 24 1911 and died July 17 1995, and he did give up professional motor racing in his 90's.
does this mean researchers know where to look in regards to a cure for accelerated aging diseases?
Define 'waste', please.
If suddenly I could live for another 500+ years I don't see what harm it would do if I spent some of that time enjoying myself.
I would still be able to read more books, study more things and be more productive than I ever could have if I only lived to be 80 or so.
The argument you're making is hardly unique and when taken to its logical conclusion is that we should all sleep on the ground, work all waking hours and eat mass-produced nutrient slurry because anything more than that would be decadent and wasteful indulgences.
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
What's the point of a longer life anyway?
You say this now, but if you were told you had just a few months to live, I really doubt your reaction would be "eh, no big deal".
I don't want to achieve immortality through my work... I want to achieve it through not dying. - Woody Allen
I have to say that I agree with this sentiment. I'd much rather be me living now, than The Buddha himself, as I still get to breathe, etc.
The Woody Allens who donñt want to die, and many other billionaires in a similar situation.
How much worty their millions (or billions) have for them, when they die?
Why they dont invest more heavily in PROVEN research?
What could be more proving that financing in a more heavy way to guys like these? http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2009/
More and better assistants, better equipments, maids, chauffeurs, cooks, vacations (to recharge batteries) whatever is needed to keep people like these FOCUSED on research and at the top of their productivity and creativity?
Even if it's not 100% sure the billionaires are going to be saved, at least it's better than accepting death without doing anything, isn't it? And they're paving the road for their children and grandchildren at least (perhaps if frozen, their immortal children and grandchildren could try to bring them back, as a way to say thanks.
I don't believe there are too many people in the world. We just don't live frugally and sustainably. We don't need people living forever unless they win some kind of life lottery via their own consent and are afforded the right to end their own life of their own free will and volition at any point after 100 years. For cancer research, I think we should permit it's use provided the longevity is removed, if that's possible. Otherwise, I think, we need to think about uthanasia for all old people. We're in no fit state to be living forever IMO.God, I hope I'm right for typing this. I'm not a globalist, but I don't think the world can handle unending generations of 'consumer gods'.
Also, sooner or later, you will die. I assure you, no matter how much you know about your genes. This is why we procreate. I would never consent to replacing children with undieing old people.
Most wide-eyed researchers started off expecting 60,000 genes in the human genome yet we found something closer to 20,000 when the mist settled.
By my early childhood instruction in improper fractions, it's not impossible that all 20,000 genes are holding down multiple jobs to make ends meet.
I am sure this gene activates and deactivates based on environmental conditions. If I had to wager, I will be anti-inflammatory subspances have a huge effect on this gene.
Achieving enlightenment is not going to Nirvana. Nirvana is a state that one is reincarnated to once enlightenment during one's life has been reached. Death is a requirement for reincarnation.
The Buddha is not an external entity, friend. Being in the now is being the Buddah.
Nirvana is the END of reincarnation. The point is to stop reincarnating not to continue it.
I'm pretty sure I can find something interesting to do with the extra years. :p
Ditto.
Even more so if, during the extra years, I am as healthy as I was at 20 (jogging as a normal gait) rather than at 65 (aching slightly all the time, pain in the morning, joints starting to fail, ...)
Coming from a line of people that typically lives to see birthdays numbered in the low nineties, I can say that even if I DON'T get any extra years it would still be a fine bonus to live just the rest of the same number without the inflammation and the impairment of body functions and healing due to cell senescence.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
What a fucking bastard he is...
Now that's talent.
I think a point to be made is that the opposite of accellerated aging due to lack of AUF1 (and its effect on causing repairing ends of DNA) is not delaying aging and prolonging life, it's normal aging.
And while delaying aging based on perpetually repairing ends of DNA, as an interested layman reading Weinberg's Biology of Cancer, cell immortalization "is a step that appears to govern the development of all human cancers."
In other words, that's one of the universal mutations that enable human cancer, as I understand it. Otherwise the cells with critical mutations enabling cancer would die off.
Tragedy of the commons - the same reason why everybody screams about drug companies making money.
Doing research costs money. Once the research is done, knowing the results of that research usually costs very little. So, why not just let somebody else pay for it?
The true cost of research isn't what it cost to run the experiment that lead to the breakthrough. The real cost is all those experiments that led to nothing useful at all. The problem is that you can't have the first without doing a lot of the second.
You still need to move FROM this existence to Nirvana, that elevation is the last reincarnation a being will make. Once a being enters Nirvana, yes, they no longer die and thus no longer reincarnate. And as I said...one must die to reach Nirvana.
i propose first we start with a simple new federal law. if you take food stamps, WIC, SNAP, etc., you are required to be surgically sterlized. start with the negligent parents who can't afford children. if they start to prosper they can afford to reverse the surgery. till then, i don't give a damn who feels "offended" by this - if you can barely afford to feed yourself and you want to have children who are going to go hungry, you don't deserve to have children you selfish fuck. anybody wanna calmly, with logic, tell me why that is faulty?
I dont know why the above comment was moderated negatively.
Can't speak for the mods, but perhaps one of the things that prompted a negative reaction (despite many glowing responses) is an education about the harmfulness of eugenics and the enormous logical flaws in its reasoning. And maybe bonus points for following a tremendously selfish proposal with "you selfish fuck" followed by "calmly, with logic".
Aside from the generic eugenics critique, the specific idea promotes a value that childbearing is earned; it promotes a value that people who have been harmed by the economy are less worthy; it promotes a value that social programs are a burden on the most powerful in society and a handout to the most powerless, rather than a benefit to the entire society; it promotes the ludicrous idea that bearing children is a net burden on either the family or the society; it imposes a set of additional costs in money and management bureaucracy on the social programs the beneficiary has, in aggregate, already paid for; it shifts those costs away from the entire society which benefits from the programs and onto the people least able to carry the burden; it sets up a regime where some people get to determine whether other people can bear children; the regime that determines eligibility for childbearing is designed by those actually responsible for the economic harm to the people affected by the proposed law; this regime is implemented by bureaucrats who, among other things, cannot be elected or recalled; and it completely fails to reason with the fact that poor people, on the whole, have children for the important reason that mouths to feed are attached to hands to help.
It's true that a growing population can be a burden on the ecosystem, and that we're facing that burden now. It doesn't follow that the most elementary and ignorant proposal—a proposal with the rigor of 1930s fascism but none of its famed efficiency—is the appropriate solution. And it's fascinating but unfortunately unsurprising that the supposedly "rational" among us are accelerating the rhetorical war against the most powerless in society while powerlessness is being showered on us. It's cowardly and anything but rational. And if it goes unchallenged, it becomes increasingly likely that we'll see this sort of eugenic ethic find a comfortable sea in which to swim in a revival of that 30s-era fascism.
There are far better ways to address population growth, the most obvious two being the elimination of poverty and the empowerment of women. Remarkably, in so doing we will have also established the political will to address the problems of a declining and aging population as well: we will have a public policy of solidarity, health and wellbeing rather than ignorance, division and blame. And we can do it with less cost and less risk.
imagine the hell that would be working 400+ years until you can afford to retire---cause billions of others living longer, and having children would tie up a lot more resources--which would drive to cost of everything up, salaries down---imagine the poor having to suck through 400 years of working wall-mart. scary.
then again, if you're lucky enough to be the first generation riding the gravy train, you'll certainly be able to experience many more retirement years, assuming you can manage money reasonably, and that you did not already start off as a wall-mart worker.
i propose first we start with a simple new federal law. if you take food stamps, WIC, SNAP, etc., you are required to be surgically sterlized. start with the negligent parents who can't afford children. if they start to prosper they can afford to reverse the surgery. till then, i don't give a damn who feels "offended" by this - if you can barely afford to feed yourself and you want to have children who are going to go hungry, you don't deserve to have children you selfish fuck. anybody wanna calmly, with logic, tell me why that is faulty?
I dont know why the above comment was moderated negatively.
Can't speak for the mods, but perhaps one of the things that prompted a negative reaction (despite many glowing responses) is an education about the harmfulness of eugenics and the enormous logical flaws in its reasoning. And maybe bonus points for following a tremendously selfish proposal with "you selfish fuck" followed by "calmly, with logic".
Aside from the generic eugenics critique, the specific idea promotes a value that childbearing is earned; it promotes a value that people who have been harmed by the economy are less worthy; it promotes a value that social programs are a burden on the most powerful in society and a handout to the most powerless, rather than a benefit to the entire society; it promotes the ludicrous idea that bearing children is a net burden on either the family or the society; it imposes a set of additional costs in money and management bureaucracy on the social programs the beneficiary has, in aggregate, already paid for; it shifts those costs away from the entire society which benefits from the programs and onto the people least able to carry the burden; it sets up a regime where some people get to determine whether other people can bear children; the regime that determines eligibility for childbearing is designed by those actually responsible for the economic harm to the people affected by the proposed law; this regime is implemented by bureaucrats who, among other things, cannot be elected or recalled; and it completely fails to reason with the fact that poor people, on the whole, have children for the important reason that mouths to feed are attached to hands to help.
It's true that a growing population can be a burden on the ecosystem, and that we're facing that burden now. It doesn't follow that the most elementary and ignorant proposal—a proposal with the rigor of 1930s fascism but none of its famed efficiency—is the appropriate solution. And it's fascinating but unfortunately unsurprising that the supposedly "rational" among us are accelerating the rhetorical war against the most powerless in society while powerlessness is being showered on us. It's cowardly and anything but rational. And if it goes unchallenged, it becomes increasingly likely that we'll see this sort of eugenic ethic find a comfortable sea in which to swim in a revival of that 30s-era fascism.
There are far better ways to address population growth, the most obvious two being the elimination of poverty and the empowerment of women. Remarkably, in so doing we will have also established the political will to address the problems of a declining and aging population as well: we will have a public policy of solidarity, health and wellbeing rather than ignorance, division and blame. And we can do it with less cost and less risk.
Some guys in pro of letting irresponsible reproduction happen, even argued economic reasons!! Yet the nazis are the ones proposing better birth control!!
My point is simple, despite political or economical reasoning, if you are not allowed to get a loan from the bank, if you don't meet minimal requirements, how come you'd be allowed to have 5 to 10 children if you are not able to GET FOOD FOR YOURSELF?
How come a person who is not able to get food for themselves, is going to be able to get food, educations, health for their kids? Could anybody explain?
Why b
Tragedy of the commons - the same reason why everybody screams about drug companies making money.
Doing research costs money. Once the research is done, knowing the results of that research usually costs very little. So, why not just let somebody else pay for it?
The true cost of research isn't what it cost to run the experiment that lead to the breakthrough. The real cost is all those experiments that led to nothing useful at all. The problem is that you can't have the first without doing a lot of the second.
My point is, the billionaire has a few years of life left, a decade at best. What's the point of not doing anything to try to escape from death?
The Nobel laureates of 2009, Telomerase research, isn't that a secure enough bet?
Research like mentioned here? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tT1vxEpE1aI Research about cryogenics?
Ok, it's not totally granted, but isn't betting in the most prestigious researchers available (hoping that grandchildren could be saved and getting their grandpa back to life somehow in the future), BETTER THAN DOING NOTHING and accept dying?
I'm sure this happens to some degree. However, almost no amount of money would lead to a practical treatment for any disease in only a few years. If they thought there was even a 10% chance of success I wouldn't be surprised if many billionaires would spend their fortunes.
Most medical progress is measured in decades, not years. The money we spend today will make a better world for our kids. However, instead the trend in the developed world is to spend money on the cares of today and leave our kids national treasuries that are leveraged to 100% or more of GDP.
If all that debt was going to R&D to cure cancer I imagine our descendants would forgive us. Most goes to propping up lifestyles of the wealthy, either directly or indirectly. Quite a bit goes to paying old people to not work, but there wouldn't be any jobs for them anyway unless you forced company owners to make less money by employing less productive people to do work.