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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."
It's usable immediately, in the form of directing future research.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Depends on what you mean by usable. It immediately prompts a study of human populations to identify how certain defects can impair it's function which will likely lead to the development of gene therapies to correct those defects, and if beneficial variants can be identified, could later lead to general purpose gene therapies to slow the rate of aging. It may also lead to studies for the development of drugs to modify it's action, but thats probably farther out than basic gene therapies for those with defective instances of these genes.
Realities just a bunch of bits.
http://www.cell.com/molecular-cell/abstract/S1097-2765(12)00341-3
If you've "cured" aging there are no "old people".
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.
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
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)
Letting nature control population means relying on one or more of nature's methods. These are also known as War, Famine, Pestilence and Death. Human choices of control are preferrable if they beat nature's. By beat, we could be talking about "less wasteful", "kinder", or somehow "ethically fairer", and the exact conclusion will vary depending on which we emphasize. In fact, we could be trying to balance many such goals. You may be arguing from some definition of "ethically fairer", "less wasteful", "less arbitrary", or some other standard. So if you really want somebody to tell you what's faulty about your proposal, until you can explain what you are trying to accomplish better than by just letting nature take its course you don't really have any logic behind your claim to refute. Without that understanding, your proposal is an emotional argument disguised as a reasoned conclusion.
Knocking out aging actually has relatively little effect on population growth in some ways, for example women still stop having fertile eggs at menopause even if they typically live much longer. How many of those opportunities to fertilize an egg actually get used has a direct effect on population that is really larger than any possible additional lifespan.
(Yes, try the math. Increase the lifespan to a blisteringly worst case full 800 years, which would be about the average if we assume nobody dies of anything except violent accidents and deliberates such as being struck by a bus or shot in a war, and add some additional worst case for population assumptions such as that most of the people who kill themselves either do it early or wouldn't do it at all if they had their health. Assume ALL fatal diseases are cureable, and all people enjoy a biological age of about 25 for as long as they live, but women still stop being fertile about 45 to 50. Now instead assume current longevity prevails, but take the worldwide reproductive rate back up to about 4.2 children per generation, add that we can somehow feed all those kids for a few generations and so the rate can (temporarily, from a long enough perspective) stay that high, and now guess which group eventually gets bigger than the other way.).
By the way, surgical sterilization is seldom reversable. The usual effect is that closing off the tubes (for either gender) triggers internal scarring and often within a couple of years an autoimmune reaction sets in which causes the eggs to become infertile or the sperm to not fully form. The odds of a pregnancy resulting from a successful reversal are as low as 20% for the most common methods of female sterilization, although there is a procedure involving simply banding the tubes with clips or rings and doing no cutting and this gives odds as high as 70%. Male sterilization reversal has slightly better odds than that, but this assumes the surgeon did the original procedure with an eye towards eventual reversal, the reversal can include more than a simple reconnection but be followed as necessary with a complete epididymal repair (with a doctor who can determine on the fly which of three different procedures should be used after he or she actually gets in there) and the auto immune reation didn't happen. We're talking about a great success rate if you have one of a few dozen extremely skilled doctors who can do that work, but those guys are a bit like heart transplant surgeons - they don't grow on trees, and they don't come cheap. If you pay a doctor public clinic wages to bulk sterilize poor people, he or she won't be a doctor with that sort of success rate on reversals. You're making something sound simple and reliable which is actually pretty much experimental rocket science, and nobody should get sterilized with the idea that it can reliably be fixed if they change their mind or circumstances..
Who is John Cabal?
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
Maybe, but "curing" aging means fixing those genetic and physical weat-and-tear issues. Mental is another story, but who knows maybe massively extended lifespans makes people less cautious. Since we don't have them we don't know.
And of course there's a cure for entropy. Humans are not closed systems after all. Heck the heat pump in my house "cures" entropy.
More cautious makes sense - you have more to lose dieing early, you have more to lose by losing your wealth, etc. Then again you've already lived a long time, maybe you consider it worth taking more risks just for the excitement value, maybe knowing you have huge amounts of time to make up that lost wealth makes risk taking more attractive?
Maybe centuries of wisdom more than compensates for whatever youth brings.