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It's impossible for an old cell to become young again, at least with our current level of technology, because that would require you to reverse all the mutation
by lawrenceyan 6y ago
It's impossible for an old cell to become young again, at least with our current level of technology, because that would require you to reverse all the mutations that have built up over time in that cell. If your argument is that our bodies have many different repair mechanisms, and that as long as we can figure out how to activate them properly, we can then reverse aging, I would caution you that while you're correct in that repair mechanisms do exist, it's important to remember that these mechanisms are themselves composed from the same components as the rest of your body, i.e. they too will age and begin to fail over time.
The only way to actually cure aging would be to develop sophisticated enough outside mechanisms that would be able to intervene and replace these biological mechanisms as they fail. Macro level replacements won't cut it either. Replacing an organ might give you a few years here or there, but it doesn't address the issue that aging fundamentally happens at a molecular / atomic level.
- pmiller2 6y ago> It's impossible for an old cell to become young again, at least with our current level of technology.... Depending what you mean by "become young again," that's not true. See https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2020/03/old-human-cells-rejuvenated-with-stem-cell-technology.html https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2020/03/old-human-cel... The problem here is scaling this up beyond tissue cultures.
- lawrenceyan 6y agoAgain, I emphasize this point: > I would caution you that while you're correct in that repair mechanisms do exist, it's important to remember that these mechanisms are themselves composed from the same components as the rest of your body, i.e. they too will age and begin to fail over time. The process of nuclear reprogramming to induced pluripotent stem cells, which is the subject of your referenced paper, is something that I believe to be a great scientific breakthrough, but nevertheless fails to address the accumulated mutations that build up over time in your cells. All those mutations don't just magically disappear.
- pmiller2 6y agoSure, but, presumably, in most cases, you can repeat the therapy. And, if such treatments are shown to provide additional healthy years, who cares, even if they're not repeatable? I'd pay for a treatment that could be shown to add years to my life expectancy.
- lawrenceyan 6y agoThere are drawbacks that you should consider. Many of the repair mechanisms that exist, which later on become deactivated, are turned off for a reason. It's important to understand that renewed growth is synonymous with cancer. The older you are, the greater the risk you face as your fail safes and redundancies begin to fail from corruption due to accumulated mutation. It's often better to completely turn the thing off, which is exactly what your body does, after a certain point. The older you get and the more you age, the more you should focus on preventing the development of cancer over anything else as that will likely have the greatest impact in determining your life expectancy, assuming you continue to stay active, eat properly, and get enough sleep.
- greatpatton 6y agoYes we can partially do that with our tehcnologies: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-15174-3 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-15174-3
- google234123 6y agoAren't these mutations diluted any time a cell divides? Anyway, life span has been changed many time for many different species via evaluation. This is not an impossible problem.
- lawrenceyan 6y ago> Aren't these mutations diluted any time a cell divides? It's actually multiplied! When you clone from a corrupted source, the resultant cells contain all the mutations the original one had along with any new errors introduced during the process of copying.