• Science Finds Fountain of Youth Brain Region That Slows Down Aging
    93 replies, posted
[QUOTE=Géza!;40524444]I suppose organisms that did not have a programmed death mechanism died out due to their deteriorating DNA before anything could become of them?[/QUOTE] Nope, there are biologically immortal animals, hydras, some jellyfish, lobsters possibly, tardigrades and flatworms casually flip death the finger when it comes to age related death.
[QUOTE=Desuh;40523894]Not if you are 60 or 80 and look like a dried fruit. Also pedophiles could have sex legally with adults with childrens bodies.[/QUOTE] It's like you're trying to be the stereotypical creepy anime fan :v:
[QUOTE=Computrix;40522549]To prevent overpopulation & resource shortages probably. I'm real excited by this if this turns into longer-lifespan drugs though.[/QUOTE] If only we did it the hardcore, Lemming way. When there's not enough space for them anymore, they just go and kill themselves en masse.
[QUOTE=Elfy;40525144]The life expectancy in my town is 54[/QUOTE] Where do you live, South Africa?
[QUOTE=Zeke129;40525109]Indirectly it does. Directly, no, it doesn't care, but it requires new births. Faster generational turnover = faster evolution. A biologically immortal species wouldn't have the need to reproduce very much so evolution would basically be at a standstill. Maybe for smaller prey animals it'd work fine but for something like humans, immortality would basically stop evolution.[/QUOTE] this is true, but i feel like evolution becomes obsolete for a certain species, when said species becomes technologically advanced enough to outgrow evolution
[QUOTE=Computrix;40522549]To prevent overpopulation & resource shortages probably. [/QUOTE] it's not to prevent anything, organisms exist which do not age; people typically reproduce around their 20s or 30s, at which point there's no way to filter out those who may live shorter than others death is just a side effect of evolution and the age we are when we have children
The hypothalamus? Isn't that where sex and food is controlled? Oh boy. [editline]4th May 2013[/editline] [QUOTE='[CWG]RustySpannerz;40524124']Everyone here is talking about evolution as if it has a plan. Evolution is not a god, it can't know what's going to happen. So it can't have this grand plan where evolution decides for the greater good that you must die. Once you get into that, you need to make a transition into talking about the possibility of God, because evolution is not a being and it can't be omniscient.[/QUOTE] evolution is quite literally just the random chance that your genes might fuck up when your cells copy them [editline]4th May 2013[/editline] Natural selection on the other hand is how evolution plays in with nature. Now of course, while nothing is controlling evolution, it certainly is quite predictable in a few ways.
[QUOTE=A Smaller God;40524494]this is super awesome and i hope something becomes of it i wanna live forever[/QUOTE] People living forever doesn't seem like a good deal to me. Sure good people can stay but that also means bad people will continue being terrible for longer periods. Besides, don't you think you'd be sick of life already?
Knew it'd be in the Hypothalamus as soon as I read the headline. Did my undergrad thesis on some of the time-keeping functions of the hypothalamus, it seems logical that ageing, if under neural control, would stem from there.
[QUOTE=LoLWaT?;40522536]If it turns out to be true it raises some interesting questions. Why do we (or for that matter [I]anything[/I]) age in the first place? Let's just assume this applied to all living things. We're all basically pre programmed to naturally die; Why the hell is that?[/QUOTE] Evolution requires both life and death to allow the survival of a species. All must eventually die to ensure that the future will survive. [editline]4th May 2013[/editline] [QUOTE=mac338;40527382]Where do you live, South Africa?[/QUOTE] South Africa is a country.
But will it only be sold to the rich and famous to keep looking like they do? If so this could put plastic surgery out of business. Yea its for slowing down diseases, but vanity is the big thing in hollywood.
[QUOTE=LoLWaT?;40522536]If it turns out to be true it raises some interesting questions. Why do we (or for that matter [I]anything[/I]) age in the first place? Let's just assume this applied to all living things. We're all basically pre programmed to naturally die; Why the hell is that?[/QUOTE] Its a question of metabolism and population mechanics. you are wearing your body out little by little, and your body is hardwired on top of that to wither away and make room for the next generation to enhabit the environment, ensuring that evolution advances rapidly by having new creatures with new genetic material. [editline]4th May 2013[/editline] Also dont get your hopes up kids. This just means that the rich pricks that sit on the majority of the worlds wealth will bother us longer.
I'm going to be so pissed if I'm part of the last generation to die.
[QUOTE=Desuh;40523894]Not if you are 60 or 80 and look like a dried fruit. Also pedophiles could have sex legally with adults with childrens bodies.[/QUOTE] "officer she told me she was 45 I swear!!!"
[QUOTE=Cowabanga;40527985]People living forever doesn't seem like a good deal to me. Sure good people can stay but that also means bad people will continue being terrible for longer periods. Besides, don't you think you'd be sick of life already?[/QUOTE] it's not like immortality will prevent bad people from facing consequences or anything plus, if you're sick of life (i dunno how anyone with a smidgen of creativity could [I]ever[/I] get sick of life), there's other ways to die besides old age [editline]4th May 2013[/editline] [QUOTE=draugur;40528030]Evolution requires both life and death to allow the survival of a species. All must eventually die to ensure that the future will survive.[/QUOTE] evolution doesn't require death, it only requires reproduction people don't die "so that the future will survive", evolution has no control over factors like overpopulation like that guy said earlier in this thread, people are attributing intelligence to evolution where there is none
Wait, so if this ia true, why hasnt there been anyone born with disorders that affect this part of their brain. I mean, im sure that there would have been, in the hundreds of thousands of generations of people that have lived on this earth, there would at least be a couple documented cases of this part of the brain going haywire and keeping someone young. ...Or maybe theres secretly a bunch of super old young people among us. Like the keanu reeves thing people were goin on about.
[QUOTE=Desuh;40523894]Not if you are 60 or 80 and look like a dried fruit. Also pedophiles could have sex legally with adults with childrens bodies.[/QUOTE] I feel unclean having read this post. I think I need a shower.
[QUOTE=Desuh;40523797]Would be cool if we could reverse aging. [IMG]http://www.testedich.de/quiz31/picture/pic_1350374013_1002.jpg[/IMG][/QUOTE] to catch a predator would get a lot more complicated. "but I thought she was 23 reverted to a 14 year old age"
[QUOTE=Kazumi;40522681]Can anyone help me find this article in a proper scientific journal? I'm having trouble finding it. Although it does seem that Dongsheng Cai has at least one article published in the Nature, which is one of the most esteemed scientific journals out there, and that lends him a massive amount of credibility. But yeah, someone help me find this paper and I can probably tell if this is bullshit or not. Better safe than sorry.[/QUOTE] [url]http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23636330[/url] EDIT: Just realised that there sin't a link to the full text. If you google the name of the article and have access to the journal then you can read it.
[QUOTE=LoLWaT?;40522536]If it turns out to be true it raises some interesting questions. Why do we (or for that matter [I]anything[/I]) age in the first place? Let's just assume this applied to all living things. We're all basically pre programmed to naturally die; Why the hell is that?[/QUOTE] Evolution. We typical die well after the breeding age, so this among many other non-fatal "flaws" have slipped through the cracks.
[QUOTE=hypno-toad;40525402]"I hate it when people bring up the most serious issue pertaining to this topic of discussion"[/QUOTE] there isnt an issue in overpopulation unless they plan on handing a treatment out to everybody in india and china lol
[QUOTE=Mr. Someguy;40523203]Nevermind the fact that Capitalism, while a good system, is [I][B]extremely[/B][/I] wasteful with food distribution. Supermarkets throw out truckloads of food because it's not 'perfect' enough to sell. If an apple has a funny shape or a can is dented, it's trash as far as they care. They're also paranoid about lawsuits regarding 'unfavorable' foods, so they don't even donate the stuff.[/QUOTE] That's not really true. Company I work at donates everything unless it the seal/package has been broken, because a foreign object could have been inserted. In the meat department we have pretty much zero waste, barely out of date stuff goes to food banks or soup kitchens, really out of date stuff goes to a wolf preserve. (Sorry about being three pages late..)
If they get this right, it will be the most important discovery ever made.
[QUOTE=RoboChimp;40535450]If they get this right, it will be the most important discovery ever made.[/QUOTE] What about fire?
[QUOTE=soliv;40536573]What about fire?[/QUOTE]What about fire?
[QUOTE=LoLWaT?;40522536]If it turns out to be true it raises some interesting questions. Why do we (or for that matter [I]anything[/I]) age in the first place? Let's just assume this applied to all living things. We're all basically pre programmed to naturally die; Why the hell is that?[/QUOTE] It's because as you live longer, the DNA in your cells slowly picks up abnormalities and mutations, both from the strain of dividing and from celestial radiation (most gamma rays dont get through the atmosphere, but cool things like muons can occasionally hit your DNA and modify it.) Your sex cells use an enzyme called telomerase to length the telemeres of their DNA, essentially setting the biological clock to 0. Remember that sheep clone, Dolly? It died earlier than expected because the cloned cell's telemeres weren't reset by telemerase.
[QUOTE=alien_guy;40524418]I thought you aged because eveytime your cells die and get replaced, the replacement is slightly worse.[/QUOTE] It depends - during a certain peroid of our lives, cells are able to be replaced perfectly with no sign of deterioration.
[QUOTE='[CWG]RustySpannerz;40524124']Everyone here is talking about evolution as if it has a plan. Evolution is not a god, it can't know what's going to happen. So it can't have this grand plan where evolution decides for the greater good that you must die. Once you get into that, you need to make a transition into talking about the possibility of God, because evolution is not a being and it can't be omniscient.[/QUOTE] No, but animals that die at a certain point are more likely to pass on their genes by giving future generations the benefit of more resources.
[QUOTE=LoLWaT?;40522536]If it turns out to be true it raises some interesting questions. Why do we (or for that matter [I]anything[/I]) age in the first place? Let's just assume this applied to all living things. We're all basically pre programmed to naturally die; Why the hell is that?[/QUOTE] its probably something to do with inbreeding live too long and end up having too much of the same genetic material going around
[QUOTE=Marik Bentusi;40523281]Evolution needs iterations to experiment and sort out the bad and the good to keep everything nicely adapted to whatever the world may throw at its creatures. In the long run survival isn't determined by how long an individual can survive - as long as it produces offspring at some point.[/QUOTE] It depends really on a number of factors. a) amount of possible offspring b) survivability of offspring into breeding age. Essentially in a lot of species, older members of the group can guarantee that more of the group gets into breeding age to have offpsring off their own. In part because those older members out of breeding age have accumulated enough knowledge to help the group overall and because they can look after offspring while the healthy members of the group hunt or whatever.
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