• Long-sought structure of telomerase paves way for drugs for aging, cancer
    8 replies, posted
http://news.berkeley.edu/2018/04/25/long-sought-structure-of-telomerase-paves-way-for-drugs-for-aging-cancer/ Study: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-04756-3
Cool shit.
Fuck cancer and cure aging, two fat birds with one stone.
Isn't this some seriously important shit? I haven't taken a biology class in a while but telomere shortening is basically one of the main things that causes aging, right? So if we can use this new information to somehow stop or hinder telomere shortening, wouldn't that drastically increase life expectancy all over the world?
Well, telomere length basically decide how many times a cell can divide itself, which is at least part of the aging process. Lots of cells don't really divide, but those organs end up aging anyway, so there are most definitely other factors that go into it. Beyond that, regulating telomere length in a useful way (assuming we could come up with a fitting drug) is probably no easy task - there are good reasons why telomerase is inactive in most cells. I'm no expert on telomeres at all (that is probably pretty obvious), but it's kinda hard to answer these kinds of questions properly; obviously there is potential, but I'll bet the potential is not very well-known right now, and the work that would go into providing a useful, targeted therapy with little side effects is probably gargantuan.
Perhaps. Regulated cell death is important in keeping random mutations from building up. It's hard to tell what will happen if we can inhibit the enzyme selectively, whether everything goes to shit or you really can get immortality if other regulatory processes can repair damage or if nothing happens at all.
Eventually we'll all be 5000 year old shitposters on fp, and still be complaining about coins
At least by then maybe one or two of us will have achieved the maximum avatar size.
Challenge accepted I'm not doing a toxx clause because I might be too old by then
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