6 ms·

Are our telomeres long enough to allow for the development of cancer, or is it necessary for the system to be overridden, thus allowing cells to replicate indef

Are our telomeres long enough to allow for the development of cancer, or is it necessary for the system to be overridden, thus allowing cells to replicate indefinitely? My layman's understanding was that benign moles were benign, and not cancerous, because the telomere system was functioning normally and limiting growth. Am I wrong?

R0b0t1 5y ago
Moles don't stop growing primarily because of telomere length but because the human genome has effective methods of controlling cancer. You get cancer something like 4 times a day but the cells are terminated. (It is possible telomeres play some part in this, but I have never seen it proposed.) What you are likely trying to broach is the question "do organisms evolve to die?" the answer to which is "yes." This was originally studied in pea plants. The maturation of the seed pods sends a chemical signal back to the main plant which induces death. It dies so that its progeny have more space; this is incentivized over generations because a changing genome is more advantageous to a static one. Same logic can be applied to animals. It is not just that there may be no pressure to evolve telomere repair, it may be that telomere repair is markedly disadvantageous.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- arkh 5y ago
  Imagine humans who can't die from old age: how many would choose to do anything dangerous? Would you risk your life crossing a road? Working on a construction site?
  - digitalsushi 5y ago
    https://gizmodo.com/if-you-could-only-die-in-sudden-accidents-how-long-wou-1794738883 https://gizmodo.com/if-you-could-only-die-in-sudden-accident...
  - bernawil 5y ago
    I had the same question reading Tolkien. The Elves don't age. They live amogst deities and have first hand knowledge of the creator of the universe. More so, they even know beyond doubt the fate that awaits those who die from other means: awaiting the end of the world in the comparatively boresome Halls of Mandos. Why would any Elf go to war as often as they do in Tolkien's universe seemed unexplicable.
    - mmcdermott 5y ago
      Tolkien's elves were also supposed to be morally pure to a greater degree than most of the world. That this would entail risking one's own longer lifespan for the greater good seems internally consistent. I think the Silmarillion also indicated that elves reincarnate, which would mean death wouldn't even be the end for them.
    - inglor_cz 5y ago
      Elves can get reincarnated from the Halls of Mandos and it is not entirely clear how often that happened, but it definitely did happen. Glorfindel of LOTR was a reincarnation of a First Age Noldo. To cite Tolkien: Elves were destined to be 'immortal', that is not to die within the unknown limits decreed by the One, which at the most could be until the end of the life of the Earth as a habitable realm. Their death - by any injury to their bodies so severe that it could not be healed - and the disembodiment of their spirits was an 'unnatural' and grievous matter. It was therefore the duty of the Valar, by command of the One, to restore them to incarnate life, if they desired it. But this 'restoration' could be delayed by Manwe, if the fea while alive had done evil deeds and refused to repent of them, or still harboured any malice against any other person among the living. [0] Of course, most of the reincarnated Elves probably stayed in Aman, so they had little influence on the development of Middle-earth. But that is not a bad consequence of getting killed in a war. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/tolkienfans/comments/90vqkq/why_exactly_was_glorfindel_reincarnated/ https://www.reddit.com/r/tolkienfans/comments/90vqkq/why_exa...
    - imtringued 5y ago
      >Why would any Elf go to war as often as they do in Tolkien's universe seemed unexplicable. Presumably because the loss of a 1000 year old friend hurts a lot.
  - TeeMassive 5y ago
    Reminds me of Death Love Robot Season 2 ;)
  - bostonsre 5y ago
    It would be interesting to see how humanity would react if that were true. If people had to worry about their actions now causing consequences later for themselves and not just other people's children, I'd imagine we wouldn't be polluting our planet so much. Maybe it would also cause us to take expanding civilisation beyond earth a lot more seriously. Or maybe it would just make wars more vicious. It wouldn't be enough to control other countries, the goal would be extermination to make room for children.
  - est31 5y ago
    Crossing a road might become way safer in the future with self driving cars, or at least safety systems like automated break assistants becoming more commonplace. As for construction sites, robotics might replace many jobs in construction in the future. As for the far future, maybe we will lie in a tank somewhere, have a cord attached to our brain and control robots that are in the dangerous environments for us. At least the people who can afford such a life style. It would also mean that we don't have to do shorter trips to visit someone or some place as you could just use avatars that are already present. Only for larger distances will ping delays become significant (thousands of km). It also means that we don't need breathable atmospheres or livable temperatures any more. Terraforming Mars would be a waste of time, as would be living down a gravity well. Maybe even the robots would be a waste if we can just live in simulated worlds instead. Already now there is a large gamer population. If you extrapolate the growing segment, we might end in a world where people spend their entire lives in simulated environments.
    - slver 5y ago
      This kind of thinking makes a nice sci-fi flick but not a good predictor of reality. Just the pandemic should've given you a hint that people at large don't like being confined to their homes and living in a virtual world. You'd have to override millions of years of evolution to do that, and I'd argue a society like this would collapse due to its general non-viability, even before our psychological health ruins us. Also no matter if you live in a virtual system or a real one, your body needs are real, and tied to an ecosystem. Taking a brain and putting in a jar works in Robocop, but again, not in reality. It's not a matter of technology. everything is interconnected. Anyway.
      - KronisLV 5y ago
        I'm not entirely sure about thinking in absolutes. > Just the pandemic should've given you a hint that people at large don't like being confined to their homes and living in a virtual world. This might be true for the majority of the society, but not everyone. Personally, i enjoy isolation from others for the most part due to my personality being rather introverted. This is also why i'm okay with remote work and prefer it to being in the office. There are certainly other people who wouldn't mind doing their jobs remotely and even if not everyone needs to do that, the technologies that would be developed around this concept would most certainly be useful in some way, like remote surgery: https://fortune.com/2020/02/11/tele-robotics-surgery-5g-health/ https://fortune.com/2020/02/11/tele-robotics-surgery-5g-heal... Even if the things above are somewhat feasonable (with technologies like VRChat becoming an interesting way of socializing for some, as well as communities on Discord and Reddit, as well as social media in general), as for the "brain jar" scenario, i think you are mostly correct. I doubt that we'd be able to tackle the more "sci-fi" topics that concern our biology. For example, even if one could maintain a brain within some sort of a container, we know way too little about what exactly it'd need to remain healthy, as well as how we'd connect all of the nerve endings. Essentially, i think that we need to study our bodies more, since there's probably a link even between our gut bacteria and the functioning of our brains, as well as all of the hormones etc.: https://www.daimanuel.com/2020/11/17/how-your-gut-health-affects-your-brain/ https://www.daimanuel.com/2020/11/17/how-your-gut-health-aff... That's not to say that we shouldn't explore new possibilities and research longetivity or even the mechanisms that control the functioning of our bodies, though. That sort of research would at the very least decrease the health spending in the elderly and would help them enjoy their later years more fully. I think it's worth pursuing without going into either of the two extremes - full trans humanism or total denial.
  - slver 5y ago
    Technically no one dies of old age. Old age is a contributive factor, and a significant one, but not a cause. Rather, we as a society, just give up on them at a certain age, and decide reasons don't matter.
    - slver 5y ago
      Also, notice that famous and/or rich people never die of "old age". They got proper healthcare, an issue was identified, there was at least an attempt to treat it. But your average folks... eh, died of old age.
  - bradlys 5y ago
    I’d imagine people would do many dangerous things, just things that wouldn’t involve death or irreparable damage. And I think if we suddenly were able to live for 1000+ years with 20 year old bodies, we’d figure out how to repair most maladies. After all, we don’t have to worry about all the medical effort we put into end of life and cancer treatment and so forth. Whole swaths of industry would be gone and likely replaced with how to grow you a new arm when it gets chopped off. (I’m sure it could be figured out, you got 1000+ years now to do it)
  - mcjkrw 5y ago
    Even if we had a way to stop aging, I guess the brains would be the biggest problem. How likely is it that our brains can function for hundreds or thousands of years? Probably not likely at all. All these things within us of unimaginable complexity work, because they had to evolve in the past. Our brains evolved to work only a few decades. Suppose we stop aging - this may be great, as we could live at our physical peak until death and the life would be much much longer on average. But at some point, maybe 100 - 200 y/o depending on individual, people's mind may just break. To truly achieve immortality, we would have to probably reverse engineer the brain and gain complete understand of how it works. Even if we could copy brains atom by atom, or upload it to virtual world, without understanding of how to assemble a brain, this will be useless. A virtual brain, which would not be enhanced in some way, would age exactly like a real world one. So probably the scenario where people can't die of old age is almost impossible, because that requires technology more advanced than even the ability to backup/restore a mind - which would allow people to die in accident and be restored - although most certainly there would be laws to regulate it, unless we have practically infinite space / land for people to live. Sorry for going all Sci-Fi on this, I watched the 6th Day yesterday. The antagonist thought he could be immortal because he had a machine that could clone (or rather copy) a person including the brain. He had the ability to get himself resurrected if he died, but he probably wouldn't be able to live even a thousand years, unless he also had developed the technology to prevent data corruption in his brain. Unless maybe I'm completely wrong and the brains are so flexible they would just work, but there's no way to test it, is it.
inglor_cz 5y ago
The main thing that stops bad cells from proliferating isn't telomeres, but our own immune system. NK cells (natural killers) are very efficient in terminating everything suspicious with extreme prejudice, so to say. Successful cancer is the one that learns how to look innocently, at least to the immune cells patrolling the body. Successful immunological treatment (actually using mRNA vaccines, that is what Moderna and BioNTech were originally about; Covid vaccines are only an adaptation) teaches the immune system to recognize the bad cells again based on their mutations. It will then jump into action and control the cancer growth.
- CoryAlexMartin 5y ago
  It never occurred to me that the immune system was involved in keeping cancer at bay, but that makes sense. Shows how lacking my biology knowledge is!
Aerroon 5y ago
>Are our telomeres long enough to allow for the development of cancer, or is it necessary for the system to be overridden, thus allowing cells to replicate indefinitely? I'm not sure that it's actually telomere length itself that's the factor. I think it's more about telomerase. Telomerase is the enzyme that lengthens telomeres. In cancer cells telomerase production is (usually) upregulated. This leads to cancer cells being able to continue dividing without telomere shortening being a problem. However, this is just a guess. I'm not clear on the details of the processes.

R0b0t1 5y ago

Moles don't stop growing primarily because of telomere length but because the human genome has effective methods of controlling cancer. You get cancer something like 4 times a day but the cells are terminated. (It is possible telomeres play some part in this, but I have never seen it proposed.) What you are likely trying to broach is the question "do organisms evolve to die?" the answer to which is "yes." This was originally studied in pea plants. The maturation of the seed pods sends a chemical signal back to the main plant which induces death. It dies so that its progeny have more space; this is incentivized over generations because a changing genome is more advantageous to a static one. Same logic can be applied to animals. It is not just that there may be no pressure to evolve telomere repair, it may be that telomere repair is markedly disadvantageous.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
arkh 5y ago
Imagine humans who can't die from old age: how many would choose to do anything dangerous? Would you risk your life crossing a road? Working on a construction site?
- digitalsushi 5y ago
  https://gizmodo.com/if-you-could-only-die-in-sudden-accidents-how-long-wou-1794738883 https://gizmodo.com/if-you-could-only-die-in-sudden-accident...
- bernawil 5y ago
  I had the same question reading Tolkien. The Elves don't age. They live amogst deities and have first hand knowledge of the creator of the universe. More so, they even know beyond doubt the fate that awaits those who die from other means: awaiting the end of the world in the comparatively boresome Halls of Mandos. Why would any Elf go to war as often as they do in Tolkien's universe seemed unexplicable.
  - mmcdermott 5y ago
    Tolkien's elves were also supposed to be morally pure to a greater degree than most of the world. That this would entail risking one's own longer lifespan for the greater good seems internally consistent. I think the Silmarillion also indicated that elves reincarnate, which would mean death wouldn't even be the end for them.
  - inglor_cz 5y ago
    Elves can get reincarnated from the Halls of Mandos and it is not entirely clear how often that happened, but it definitely did happen. Glorfindel of LOTR was a reincarnation of a First Age Noldo. To cite Tolkien: Elves were destined to be 'immortal', that is not to die within the unknown limits decreed by the One, which at the most could be until the end of the life of the Earth as a habitable realm. Their death - by any injury to their bodies so severe that it could not be healed - and the disembodiment of their spirits was an 'unnatural' and grievous matter. It was therefore the duty of the Valar, by command of the One, to restore them to incarnate life, if they desired it. But this 'restoration' could be delayed by Manwe, if the fea while alive had done evil deeds and refused to repent of them, or still harboured any malice against any other person among the living. [0] Of course, most of the reincarnated Elves probably stayed in Aman, so they had little influence on the development of Middle-earth. But that is not a bad consequence of getting killed in a war. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/tolkienfans/comments/90vqkq/why_exactly_was_glorfindel_reincarnated/ https://www.reddit.com/r/tolkienfans/comments/90vqkq/why_exa...
  - imtringued 5y ago
    >Why would any Elf go to war as often as they do in Tolkien's universe seemed unexplicable. Presumably because the loss of a 1000 year old friend hurts a lot.
- TeeMassive 5y ago
  Reminds me of Death Love Robot Season 2 ;)
- bostonsre 5y ago
  It would be interesting to see how humanity would react if that were true. If people had to worry about their actions now causing consequences later for themselves and not just other people's children, I'd imagine we wouldn't be polluting our planet so much. Maybe it would also cause us to take expanding civilisation beyond earth a lot more seriously. Or maybe it would just make wars more vicious. It wouldn't be enough to control other countries, the goal would be extermination to make room for children.
- est31 5y ago
  Crossing a road might become way safer in the future with self driving cars, or at least safety systems like automated break assistants becoming more commonplace. As for construction sites, robotics might replace many jobs in construction in the future. As for the far future, maybe we will lie in a tank somewhere, have a cord attached to our brain and control robots that are in the dangerous environments for us. At least the people who can afford such a life style. It would also mean that we don't have to do shorter trips to visit someone or some place as you could just use avatars that are already present. Only for larger distances will ping delays become significant (thousands of km). It also means that we don't need breathable atmospheres or livable temperatures any more. Terraforming Mars would be a waste of time, as would be living down a gravity well. Maybe even the robots would be a waste if we can just live in simulated worlds instead. Already now there is a large gamer population. If you extrapolate the growing segment, we might end in a world where people spend their entire lives in simulated environments.
  - slver 5y ago
    This kind of thinking makes a nice sci-fi flick but not a good predictor of reality. Just the pandemic should've given you a hint that people at large don't like being confined to their homes and living in a virtual world. You'd have to override millions of years of evolution to do that, and I'd argue a society like this would collapse due to its general non-viability, even before our psychological health ruins us. Also no matter if you live in a virtual system or a real one, your body needs are real, and tied to an ecosystem. Taking a brain and putting in a jar works in Robocop, but again, not in reality. It's not a matter of technology. everything is interconnected. Anyway.
    - KronisLV 5y ago
      I'm not entirely sure about thinking in absolutes. > Just the pandemic should've given you a hint that people at large don't like being confined to their homes and living in a virtual world. This might be true for the majority of the society, but not everyone. Personally, i enjoy isolation from others for the most part due to my personality being rather introverted. This is also why i'm okay with remote work and prefer it to being in the office. There are certainly other people who wouldn't mind doing their jobs remotely and even if not everyone needs to do that, the technologies that would be developed around this concept would most certainly be useful in some way, like remote surgery: https://fortune.com/2020/02/11/tele-robotics-surgery-5g-health/ https://fortune.com/2020/02/11/tele-robotics-surgery-5g-heal... Even if the things above are somewhat feasonable (with technologies like VRChat becoming an interesting way of socializing for some, as well as communities on Discord and Reddit, as well as social media in general), as for the "brain jar" scenario, i think you are mostly correct. I doubt that we'd be able to tackle the more "sci-fi" topics that concern our biology. For example, even if one could maintain a brain within some sort of a container, we know way too little about what exactly it'd need to remain healthy, as well as how we'd connect all of the nerve endings. Essentially, i think that we need to study our bodies more, since there's probably a link even between our gut bacteria and the functioning of our brains, as well as all of the hormones etc.: https://www.daimanuel.com/2020/11/17/how-your-gut-health-affects-your-brain/ https://www.daimanuel.com/2020/11/17/how-your-gut-health-aff... That's not to say that we shouldn't explore new possibilities and research longetivity or even the mechanisms that control the functioning of our bodies, though. That sort of research would at the very least decrease the health spending in the elderly and would help them enjoy their later years more fully. I think it's worth pursuing without going into either of the two extremes - full trans humanism or total denial.
- slver 5y ago
  Technically no one dies of old age. Old age is a contributive factor, and a significant one, but not a cause. Rather, we as a society, just give up on them at a certain age, and decide reasons don't matter.
  - slver 5y ago
    Also, notice that famous and/or rich people never die of "old age". They got proper healthcare, an issue was identified, there was at least an attempt to treat it. But your average folks... eh, died of old age.
- bradlys 5y ago
  I’d imagine people would do many dangerous things, just things that wouldn’t involve death or irreparable damage. And I think if we suddenly were able to live for 1000+ years with 20 year old bodies, we’d figure out how to repair most maladies. After all, we don’t have to worry about all the medical effort we put into end of life and cancer treatment and so forth. Whole swaths of industry would be gone and likely replaced with how to grow you a new arm when it gets chopped off. (I’m sure it could be figured out, you got 1000+ years now to do it)
- mcjkrw 5y ago
  Even if we had a way to stop aging, I guess the brains would be the biggest problem. How likely is it that our brains can function for hundreds or thousands of years? Probably not likely at all. All these things within us of unimaginable complexity work, because they had to evolve in the past. Our brains evolved to work only a few decades. Suppose we stop aging - this may be great, as we could live at our physical peak until death and the life would be much much longer on average. But at some point, maybe 100 - 200 y/o depending on individual, people's mind may just break. To truly achieve immortality, we would have to probably reverse engineer the brain and gain complete understand of how it works. Even if we could copy brains atom by atom, or upload it to virtual world, without understanding of how to assemble a brain, this will be useless. A virtual brain, which would not be enhanced in some way, would age exactly like a real world one. So probably the scenario where people can't die of old age is almost impossible, because that requires technology more advanced than even the ability to backup/restore a mind - which would allow people to die in accident and be restored - although most certainly there would be laws to regulate it, unless we have practically infinite space / land for people to live. Sorry for going all Sci-Fi on this, I watched the 6th Day yesterday. The antagonist thought he could be immortal because he had a machine that could clone (or rather copy) a person including the brain. He had the ability to get himself resurrected if he died, but he probably wouldn't be able to live even a thousand years, unless he also had developed the technology to prevent data corruption in his brain. Unless maybe I'm completely wrong and the brains are so flexible they would just work, but there's no way to test it, is it.

inglor_cz 5y ago

The main thing that stops bad cells from proliferating isn't telomeres, but our own immune system. NK cells (natural killers) are very efficient in terminating everything suspicious with extreme prejudice, so to say. Successful cancer is the one that learns how to look innocently, at least to the immune cells patrolling the body. Successful immunological treatment (actually using mRNA vaccines, that is what Moderna and BioNTech were originally about; Covid vaccines are only an adaptation) teaches the immune system to recognize the bad cells again based on their mutations. It will then jump into action and control the cancer growth.

CoryAlexMartin 5y ago
It never occurred to me that the immune system was involved in keeping cancer at bay, but that makes sense. Shows how lacking my biology knowledge is!

Aerroon 5y ago

>Are our telomeres long enough to allow for the development of cancer, or is it necessary for the system to be overridden, thus allowing cells to replicate indefinitely? I'm not sure that it's actually telomere length itself that's the factor. I think it's more about telomerase. Telomerase is the enzyme that lengthens telomeres. In cancer cells telomerase production is (usually) upregulated. This leads to cancer cells being able to continue dividing without telomere shortening being a problem. However, this is just a guess. I'm not clear on the details of the processes.