Thanks for the article.
I am a bit baffled at how they feel adjusting cellular longevity has significance? We all get new bodies on average every 7 years. apart from muscle cells which replace every 15 years...MOST of our cells are replaced with new ones every few weeks... but we still get old! My point being, the cells themselves are not the issue! So pondering the affect autophages may or may not have on cell longevity is interesting but unrelated to getting old persee. The oldest anyone has ever been cellularly is ~15 (-20) years, ever !
So what causes ageing........ ? A countdown to death, clock or sumfin'?.....lol...he he....Ehm what.... Yes...in fact !
,,,,,and the Coundown Clocks have already started people !
Age is due to the quality of cells being made by the body deteriorating over time. This is because DNA is damaged every time it is read and copied, ready to split to make a new cell. We all have a countdown clock that was initiated the moment we first copied our DNA in order to become multi cellular.
GOOGLE "The Hayflick Limit" :
basically DNA folds up to form a chromosome , they have caps on the ends [black below] to stop the DNA getting damaged or fraying , similar to the plastic tube at the end of a shoe lace. Over time, specifically every time it is copied, it is worn down.
Before we screw our fists up at the Hayflick death clock....
Mistakes in DNA reading / copying are the mechanism for an amaxing process.
Imagine you are a pig breeder and you want a real fat pig, YOU select the two fattest pigs, they breed and guess what... you get a fat piglet. The genes of the fat pigs will live on as you selected them to.
----------------------------------------------- So........?
Red blood cells are round and are kept round by a network of protein fibres.
When there is an error in the genetics to code for those fibres, the fibre is not made properly and the red blood cells collapses in on themselves and they look "sickle shaped"..... otherwise known as sickle cell anaemia.
By chance, sickle shaped red blood cells make it difficult to catch the deadly disease malaria, due to the shape of the cell. In the regions with the highest rates of malaria, sickle cell genes thrive. Why? Because those sickle cell people are the healthiest and better suited to their enviroment. So they eat, survive and procreate more and dominate the genes of the area,
The farmer picking the fattest pigs in his farm enviroment is partaking in.... Human Selection, selecting the genes and anatomy of the pig species.
Malaria /nature is picking the genes that will survive in its enviroment... this is ..... NATURAL SELECTION of the genes of a species.
There is no design, no thought process, yet you get an end result that looks like it was designed for its enviroment.
Thats it.... that is all evolution is.
Millions of years of mutations later, selected for dominance by the enviroment, the fittest survive. Once millions of years pass, what was species A is now species X, Y and Z.
Once the DNA has changed enough, animals can no longer breed with each other as the copying mechanism wont work, and they are classfied as a new species.
This is the theory. Simple! All of the mechansism described have been observed, whether it be bacteria mutating walls resisitant to antibiotics or fly's bred until they could not reproduce anymore with their original line. (As mutations happen per generation evolution is hard to see in anything with a long life, hence bacteria, fly's etc are used!)
So if I asked what shape a human red blood cell is, the answer in 2013 is round (corpsuclar), because on average that is their shape. If malaria spread like wild fire globally , in 50 years time what would be the shape of a human red blood cell? On average... sickle shaped !
This is how anatomy etc is selected for by nature, this is evolution (change over time). The phrase "survival of the fittest" refers to survival of the genes that best fit the enviroment, it is nothing to do with power, strength or endurance. Darwin was working with plants and worms not bears and tigers!
Ok I have rambled enough.....
Peace out x
Snare x
