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Telomere-Lengthening Procedure Turns Clock Back Years In Human Cells
Zothecula writes Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have developed a new procedure to increase the length of human telomeres. This increases the number of times cells are able to divide, essentially making the cells many years younger. This not only has useful applications for laboratory work, but may point the way to treating various age-related disorders – or even muscular dystrophy.
You might be thinking of something different, reverting the cells to stem cells. These are the telomeres, which are the tail end of the DNA strand that gets chopped a little every time the cell splits. After many splits, there's none left and the cell dies.
There are already ways to extend the telomeres, that is something telomerase accomplishes, but this is a new procedure.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
The first author of the paper did an impromptu AMA over at reddit. http://www.reddit.com/r/scienc...
========== "Hello World" in my programming language of choice: ATG - LET THERE BE LIFE - TAG ==========
Although application of this RNA initially causes telomeres to lengthen, within 48 hours they once again begin to shorten as cells divide. This is a good thing, however, as cells that divide endlessly could pose a increased cancer risk if used in humans.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
My question is will it reverse aging? Can you rejuvenate?
This is only one aspect of aging. Here is a list of several others. All of them probably need to be addressed to reverse aging (and probably other things we don't know about).
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Even as a sardine is just a bird with an altitude problem.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I hate to go all Negative-Nellie on you here, but let me give you a counter-example. There is a drug marketed under the name "Xyrem" that is used to treat very difficult cases of narcolepsy, which is no laughing matter if you know someone with the disease (which I do) or have it yourself (which I don't). This drug used to be cheaply available over the counter, but in more recent times, it has fallen under patent protection and costs up to $12,000 per month, with the price regularly increasing. You read that right: an over the counter drug became an obscenely expensive patent medicine. When I learned this story, I learned the lesson that money buys public policy in the USA.
You can tell yourself that the fedgov and megacorps can't keep something from us, but in practice, they can make it very difficult and dangerous to obtain outside of the authorized channels when there is enough money involved. Enforcement of laws against marijuana, cocaine, ecstacy, and even meth are nothing compared to this obscenity.
In short, I do believe that the establishment has the power to keep this from us no matter how bad we want it.
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
The last 115 year old that died had 2 stem cells supplying more than 80% of her red blood cells.
Citation needed.