27 ms·
Cells across the body talk to each other about aging
- fnord77 3y agoin worms
- tjr 3y agoTrue. It's usually in mice. Nice change of pace!
- shove 3y agoYep, that’s where we all end up!
- redcobra762 3y agowhich have cells like humans
- fnordpiglet 3y agoAll living things have at least one cell, but they do not all operate in the same way. There’s possibility that worm cells and human cells behave similarly in this, but it’s also fully possible they behave in very dissimilar ways.
- redcobra762 3y agoWhich is why this is interesting! I just wanted to combat the whole "this isn't relevant to humans" pushback. There's potential value here.
- fnord77 3y agonobody said "this isn't relevant to humans" The article is written in such a way that you think it is about human cells until you get fairly far into it.
- Affric 3y agoTrue, and obviously worms and humans aren’t closely related. With that said, this research is about how cells cooperate to form a multicellular animal. I think it would be interesting to use the results to design an experiment that could be applied to animals more closely related to humans (that with these results in hand you could get passed the animal ethics committee).
- fnordpiglet 3y agoWell, it’s how mitochondria in cells in worms cooperate. We already know cells cooperate through many channels and some channels we understand quite well. This is truly only about worms right now. Obviously generalizing to other animals will be important next steps. But the title and text of the article implies a much more general understanding than we actually have. It’s not to diminish the results in the least. But science isn’t served by claiming progress we haven’t made, it makes it harder to fund the next step by building an assumption of nonexistent progress.
- LASR 3y agoYou know, I've recently wondered quite a bit about aging and how any of it makes sense. What has perplexed me is the notion of honest signals[1] in a world governed by natural selection and the survival of the fittest. Why wouldn't cheating exclusively emerge as the only strategy? Why wouldn't a species evolve a mechanism to survive longer and longer till it completely dominates? Then it dawned on me that the survival of the species is not aligned with the survival of an individual. Cheating maximizes the benefit to that individual. But possibly damages the collective. Why is why honest signals even exist. Aging and death as being pre-programmed is in service of the collective and that's why it even exists. A bit of existential dread. But sharing it nonetheless. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_theory
- kraftman 3y agoit seems like dishonesty, at least in terms of reproduction, would self correct pretty fast? Like if an animal signals that its strong genetically, but it isnt actually, then its offspring wont fair as well and will be less likely to reproduce, so 'lying' would die off pretty quickly?
- Centigonal 3y agoI think it's difficult to signal genetic fitness without actually being genetically fit. There are proxies to genetic fitness that are frequently and successfully mimicked, though. See e.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batesian_mimicry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batesian_mimicry
- lanstin 3y agoIf your fake out display of fitness is attractive to the other sex, then it is actual reproductive fitness.
- deadbabe 3y agoCheating could just get you killed off by jealous partners, cutting off your ability to reproduce more. It’s like marking territory.
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- andrewstuart 3y agoAs you get older you find it becomes a key topic of conversation not just amongst your cells but amongst friends - the conversation always heads towards whatever ailment or problem your body has recently dealt you.
- lanstin 3y agoThis effect, which I can confirm in more than set of friends, is one of the most annoying aspects of aging. I'd rather gossip about the cheer leaders or the football players than listen to people talk about procedures. I certain have a lot more aches and pains but I don't care to let my attention linger on them.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago"As a worm ages, the quality of its eggs or sperm declines — what we refer to as the ticking of a biological clock. The decline is also reflected in the germ cells’ changing ability to transmit signals from the brain’s mitochondria, he suggested. As the worm grows older, its germline transmits the repair signal less effectively, and so its body declines, too. Scientists don’t yet know whether these findings apply to humans and how we age. Still, the hypothesis makes sense from a broader evolutionary standpoint, Dillin said. As long as the germ cells are healthy, they send pro-survival signals to ensure that their host organism survives to reproduce. But as the quality of the germ cells declines, there is no evolutionary reason to keep extending life span further; from evolution’s perspective, life exists to reproduce itself." Curious what effect castration has on this mechanism.
- yarg 3y ago> But as the quality of the germ cells declines, there is no evolutionary reason to keep extending life span further; from evolution’s perspective, life exists to reproduce itself. When the individual's survival is the only selection factor, this is true - but it ceases to be the case in social species where reproductively non-viable individuals can still positively influence the reproductive chances of the young. This may be an indirect feedback loop - but a little bit of latency doesn't make a huge difference when you're dealing with hundreds of thousands of generations of natural selection.
- wcoenen 3y agoThe survival of the individual is indeed not what natural selection is selecting for. Otherwise phenomena like eusocial insects with sterile workers would not make sense. What is actually selected for, is genes that somehow promote more copies of themselves. This is the main takeaway from the book "the selfish gene". However, the example of ants and bees shows that this doesn't exactly promote long lifespan in the sterile workers... Instead, they are mass-produced expendable drones.
- wegfawefgawefg 3y ago
- jdjdjdkdksmdnd 3y agohow does anyone deny the epigenetic model of aging demonstrated by david sinclair?
- _ink_ 3y agoCan you ELI5 it?
- anigbrowl 3y agoEffective advocacy begins with letting go of the assumption that everyone already knows about the things you know about. I'm sure this person is well known within the bioscience community, but this is the first time I'd heard of him or his model. https://www.nad.com/news/harvard-professor-david-sinclairs-information-theory-of-aging https://www.nad.com/news/harvard-professor-david-sinclairs-i...
- throw__away7391 3y ago> This technique also extended the lifespan of mice with a premature aging condition by about 40%. Why is it always like this? Even "in mice" I think they always start with an animal that has been genetically modified to age faster or show some trait of aging and then cure that, as opposed to taking a normal healthy mouse and extending its age by 40%, no?
- JPLeRouzic 3y ago> Why is it always like this? Because it is an easy way to write a paper? Even with the genetic line, same chow and environment, it's possible to have mice that are ill in one location and healthy in another. https://www.alzforum.org/news/research-news/gut-microbes-difference-between-life-and-death-c9orf72-mice https://www.alzforum.org/news/research-news/gut-microbes-dif...
- grishka 3y agoDavid Sinclair is a social media influencer more than anything else. His insistence on life extension through lifestyle alone is telling, because it's so easy to sell to the general public. Except this doesn't work and can't work — if an organism has a goal to destroy itself, which it does as part of its aging program, it WILL destroy itself, no matter how much you change its environment. You need to overwrite that internal goal state to truly cure aging which can't be done through any manner of lifestyle interventions.
- debo_ 3y agoIn this way, cells are similar to all of my elderly Italian relatives.
- phkahler 3y agoI've come to think mitochondria are somehow fundamental to health in ways we can't even see. No sources, but they seem relevant to structure of the overall organism, proper healing of wounds, something in the brain (they can move between neurons), apoptosis, and a few other odd things I've seen talked about. They also come up in any number of diseases and conditions. All far beyond what you'd expect from "powerhouse of the cell" producing ATP.
- tommychillfiger 3y agoI'm primed to agree as I like running, and running appears to increase mitochondrial function and density. It also appears to have some anti aging effects, which would track.
- phkahler 3y agoBut runners also tend to look more aged, don't they?
- TheCoelacanth 3y agoProbably not if they take care to protect their skin from sun damage
- phkahler 3y ago>> Probably not if they take care to protect their skin from sun damage Hah, thanks. I never made that connection.
- aeternum 3y agoYes, the interesting thing here is that it's the germ cell mitochondria that seem to be the originators of the signal. The article's findings are also backed by data on Eunuchs who live almost 20 years longer than non-castrated men. Now the real question is: Are Bryan Johnson and his followers willing to take logical next step?
- Kalanos 3y agoreminds me of how stress, especially from exercise is good for you
- CatWChainsaw 3y agoStress is like cholesterol. There are good types and bad types.
- yukkuri 3y agoCount down to "prolong" treatments like in David Weber's books?
- dukeofdoom 3y agoWhat I'm curious about is how if we are just two cells at one point in our life. Do all the human behaviours and inherent knowledge get transferred. Where is that information kept. Even, uncontacted sentinel island tribes still behave very much like a human. I asked ChatGPT ... "the rough estimate for the data storage capacity of the human genome in bytes is approximately 6 billion bits .... or equivalently, 750 megabytes." That doesn't seem like its enough.
- 8organicbits 3y agoIs it possible to cite a better source than ChatGpt? We have no idea if that's nonsense.
- dukeofdoom 3y agoIt did the math. I just didn't post it. Not sure if this is how DNA stories information. "The storage capacity of DNA is typically expressed in bits or bytes, as DNA can be used as a medium for data storage. Each base pair can represent 2 bits of data (since there are four possible combinations: AT, TA, CG, GC). Therefore, the human genome, with 3 billion base pairs, can theoretically store about 6 billion bits of data. To convert this into bytes, you divide the number of bits by 8 (since 8 bits make up 1 byte). So, the rough estimate for the data storage capacity of the human genome in bytes is approximately 6 billion bits 8 = 750 million bytes 8 6billion bits =750million bytes, or equivalently, 750 megabytes."
- speedylight 3y agoAging should be classified as a disease because there has to be a set of biological levers that we can manipulate with drugs or other forms of medicine which will have an effect on the aging process across the entire. Like using RNA to reprogram the cells in the body to do things outside of what’s encoded in our base DNA. I don’t see why aging can’t be reversible, I’ve heard some people say it’s an impossible task because they equate aging with the fact that time can only move forward and therefore aging must inherit the same property. But aging is just damage that accumulates over time, but damage can be repaired with the right tools. I should say I am not a biologist, I just try to use my imagination to solve problems and this what it’s telling me about aging.
- omeid2 3y ago> I don’t see why aging can’t be reversible Aging is loss of information, you can't reverse that. You can prevent it though.
- Fbnkigffb66tfbj 3y agoThe human body has trillions of cells. Surely there are enough copies of our DNA to recover its original form even if individual copies have extensive damage.
- mlyle 3y agoYah, I don't think it's the loss of information, but a related concept: it's a decline in order. We have a whole lot of redundancy and mechanisms to restore/repair redundancy. But even so, there's a march of entropy upwards; oxidation, genetic damage, cell death, tissue damage, neuron loss, etc. We don't have repair mechanisms for everything the body knows how to build, and the repair mechanisms that we do have become less effective to use (and often less safe) as the body ages.
- omeid2 3y ago> it's a decline in order. That is another way of saying loss of information and increase of entropy.
- Metacelsus 3y ago*in C. elegans I'm glad that the article did say this, though: "Scientists don’t yet know whether these findings apply to humans and how we age."
- windex 3y agoI wonder when if anytime these results will translate to humans.
- grishka 3y agoThis seems to fit nicely with the other research that explores the rejuvenation effects of "young blood", but specifically purified and concentrated extracellular vesicles. Harold Katcher's research especially — except he doesn't yet know what it is exactly in those EVs that triggers the effect he observed in rats. Here's one of those papers: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.08.06.552148v1.full.pdf https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.08.06.552148v1....
- spacetimeuser5 3y agoIt's easy to make evolutionary claims when you can't observe even with modern methods 80% of stuff in vivo. Cognitive Scientist Claims Evolution Is Not The Full Story https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FriefeHhp5E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FriefeHhp5E