regenerating telomeres

[gotopogo]

if some one were to find a way to make your telomeres regenerate then would you be able to achieve immortality and by this i don't mean live forever i mean not die of old age

please forgive me for my stupidity if i am wrong im still just a teenXD

[BioWizard]

Yours is an absolutely valid question. Check this thread though: viewtopic.php?f=18&t=12771

[Paralith]

That thread BioWizard linked to is excellent, has a lot of good information. But, it is very long, haha.

This is the short answer.

Like Bio said, your question is good, lots of people ask that. But there is more to aging than just telomere length. That is part of it, but there are other things too. The DNA of your cells becomes more damaged and mutated over time, especially for parts of your body that have to grow and regenerate very often, like your stomach and intestines. Metabolism (eating food, breaking it down, and using the resulting parts to feed, grow, and heal your body) creates damaging chemicals that build up in your body over your lifetime, which cause damage to structures in your cells, like your mitochondria. The mitochondria are the organelles that are the "powerhouse of the cell" and they are very important to good cell function.

To stop aging completely, we would have to make many different changes, and not just focus on telomeres.

[BioWizard]

You're absolutely right Paralith, I hadn't realized how long it had gotten. Thanks :)

[gotopogo]

thank you also if someone were to alter an immortal cell so that it didn't divide but did what it was meant to do (what ever it is be it a white blood cell or anything else in your body) seeing as how this would stop you from aging this would be a form of immortality right? given it will cause internal bleeding amongst other things you wouldn't die of old age along with sense your cells cant be damaged anymore you wouldn't get cancer ether is this right?

[Paralith]

Well, that cell would still have to metabolize food in order to stay alive and do its function, which means it would build up those damaging chemicals. However, there are ways to deal with that damage, but not all types of cells are able to deal with it. You'd need to make sure the cell has maximum damage reduction and repair mechanisms turned on, and that it has enough energy to power those mechanisms.

[gotopogo]

yes i already realized that part at the moment im trying to figure out how to achieve immortality ill figure out the rest at another time but this will in theory work right?

[gotopogo]

so basically with some tweaking cancer cells could be used to cause immortality correct?

[Paralith]

In theory, if you can prevent and/or fix all damage done to the cell's structures and DNA, and it is not programmed to die at a certain time, yes, it could be immortal. But that's a lot easier said than done.

Cancer cells are not immune to metabolic damage, and they no longer serve any helpful function to the body. They eat and grow and multiply and that's about it.

[gotopogo]

its a cell made from cancer not exactly a cancer cell sorry i never took any classes on this so my wording is poor its basically a cell immortal like cancer but still serves its purpose

[BioWizard]

Ok, two comments:

1- Cellular immortality has nothing to do with organismal immortality. In fact, it is IMPORTANT for cells to die in order for the organism to remain healthy. Making cells immortal can be counterproductive in most multicellular contexts. What matters is the balance between new cells that are being formed and old cells that are dying off. This is where the thread I referenced will answer a lot of your questions and save you quite a bit of time. You should read it.

2- Don't worry about not having perfect English. Many members here speak it as a second or third language. However, please attempt to make what you do know a little clearer. That is, use proper punctuation, capitalization, etc. It's hard enough to understand perfect English without any punctuation.

[gotopogo]

If every cell in the human body was immortal then how would the human die?

[BioWizard]

If every cell in the human body was immortal then how would the human die?

That's exactly what cancer is. Cells that don't die, which end up taking over the body. It's harder to maintain cells in good health for very long period of time than it is to destroy them and make new fresh ones. So by turning over cells (killing old ones and replenishing them with new ones), the body keeps tissues healthy and minimizes accumulation of cellular damage (from oxidative stress, toxins, radiation, etc). Additionally, processes such as wound healing and immune response are built on cell death and require it to occur for them to progress properly. Without cell death, the body will have an endless number of problems, including failure to properly defend, heal, and repair itself, which will be completely counterproductive to the goal of extending lifespan.

We age and lose health over time not because our cells die - cell death is a good thing as we've established. We age and lose health because our body gradually loses its ability to replace old/dying/dead cells with new vital ones, and that is what we need to focus on for increasing lifespan and improving health. Making all cells immortal will simply keep the rubbish around and accumulate old damaged tired cells, which if anything, will shorten lifespan.

Think about it this way. You can extend the lifetime of a machine by continuously replacing any old/damaged parts with new ones. If you make all parts irreplaceable (immortal), the parts will accumulate damage and the machine will break down and become dysfunctional as a whole much faster.

[gotopogo]

thank you now that makes sense. ok so how about a type of cell that flows threw your blood stream and replicates the type of cell that needs replacing...so like having an injection of mirror cells to keep you healthy when your body cant replace cells anymore this would do it for your body

[BioWizard]

Check this : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stem_cell

Also, you really should look over the thread I referenced. It will provide answers for most if not all of your questions. Then you're welcome to ask new ones.

[gotopogo]

so immortality wise.....i should just give up and let people who are say over 16 do it?

[BioWizard]

so immortality wise.....i should just give up and let people who are say over 16 do it?

Of course not. It is, however, a wee bit more complicated than meets the untrained eye :) So you gotta be prepared to do a LOT of reading before you can start contributing to the body of knowledge.

[Gregorygregg1]

If every cell in the human body was immortal then how would the human die?

That's exactly what cancer is. Cells that don't die, which end up taking over the body. It's harder to maintain cells in good health for very long period of time than it is to destroy them and make new fresh ones. So by turning over cells (killing old ones and replenishing them with new ones), the body keeps tissues healthy and minimizes accumulation of cellular damage (from oxidative stress, toxins, radiation, etc). Additionally, processes such as wound healing and immune response are built on cell death and require it to occur for them to progress properly. Without cell death, the body will have an endless number of problems, including failure to properly defend, heal, and repair itself, which will be completely counterproductive to the goal of extending lifespan.

We age and lose health over time not because our cells die - cell death is a good thing as we've established. We age and lose health because our body gradually loses its ability to replace old/dying/dead cells with new vital ones, and that is what we need to focus on for increasing lifespan and improving health. Making all cells immortal will simply keep the rubbish around and accumulate old damaged tired cells, which if anything, will shorten lifespan.

Think about it this way. You can extend the lifetime of a machine by continuously replacing any old/damaged parts with new ones. If you make all parts irreplaceable (immortal), the parts will accumulate damage and the machine will break down and become dysfunctional as a whole much faster.

Nicely said biowizard. This principal can be seen as a fractal operating at all scales of life, molecular, cellular, in the organism and in the ecosystem. Life does a good job repairing itself. In humans far longer than is necessary, in other words far past the age of maturity and procreation. This is a gift life gives us. But death is necessary for life. It is an essential part of the mechanism of evolution. You will never build the Maserati if you keep fixing the horse buggy.

[BioWizard]

That's a very valid point Gregory, although that's more related to the evolution of ageing and the role it serves in the survival of species as a whole. While very true, it's a bit beyond the scope of this thread.

[gotopogo]

death is necessary for life

as in cells have to die or people have to die?

[Paralith]

death is necessary for life

as in cells have to die or people have to die?

Both. But I think Gregorygregg is talking about evolution, in particular evolution by natural selection.

For a species to evolve, many individuals have to die. And this is because an individual cannot change the genes they were born with. Many individuals are born, with different gene variations. Some variations are helpful for surviving and reproducing in their environment, and some are not. For the species as a whole to become better adapted, those individuals with the good variations need to survive and reproduce, and those with the bad variations at least need to not reproduce, so that their bad genes do not spread. When they die they will take with them the bad gene variations and remove them from the species.

I personally think this is less important for humans, because we're smart critters that can change our environment to suit our needs. And some day soon we'll be smart enough to change our genes by ourselves if that's what we need to do. Well, that's what I believe, I know Bio doesn't. (Sorry boss, not trying to start that old argument. :))

As Bio said, this is less related to the process of aging. But lifespans do evolve, that is a trait that species have. Your body has evolved to last for a certain length of time and no more.

[gotopogo]

and on a completely different note sense sleep in its self regenerates your telomeres does it slightly extend your life?

[Paralith]

I'm pretty sure sleep does not regenerate telomeres. You do a lot of healing and growing during sleep, but I think telomeres are unrelated.

[gotopogo]

sorry i miss read the artical it regenerates telomeres in hamster and possibly humans

[BioWizard]

I personally think this is less important for humans, because we're smart critters that can change our environment to suit our needs. And some day soon we'll be smart enough to change our genes by ourselves if that's what we need to do. Well, that's what I believe, I know Bio doesn't. (Sorry boss, not trying to start that old argument. :))

No argument. But just to be clear, I DO think that we'll be smart enough to actually do it, in that we'll have the technology to execute it. Hell, we're already doing it in the context of gene therapy. What I do not think we should do, however, is take it beyond "corrective" gene therapy and start doing forward editing (as opposed to just corrective, therapeutic, editing) the genome of the entire specie. And that has less to do with how smart we are and more with us not having enough information to consistently make the best choices about everything related to our DNA (add to that the fact that collectively, we can be incredibly dumb). When you consider humanity's track record up to this point, our ability to get overconfident, get carried away, and screw things up horrendously is quite impressive. There's a lot that needs to be worked out beforehand, such as overpopulation, poverty, etc, because these problems would only be further compounded by making super humans. Maybe one day we'll work through all these issues and get to a point where we are ready to forward edit our genomes. But until then, I'm utterly unconvinced of humanity's ability to make correct choices about most things, let alone about something as fundamental to our existence and identify as our genomes. When you get past all the facts, it boils down to a matter of opinion, and this just happens to be mine at this time.

[gotopogo]

When you consider humanity's track record up to this point, our ability to get overconfident, get carried away, and screw things up horrendously is quite impressive.

XD thank you for making my day:)