6 ms·

Forever Young: how one molecule can lock plants in a youthful state (2025)

139 points by bryanrasmussen 5mo ago

aaron695 5mo ago
[dead]
spwa4 5mo ago
The weird thing about death (as in aging, not as in accidents/getting eaten) is that it's "an invention". As in natural selection decided at one point to introduce death. It really is the case that older lifeforms don't die. All mammals do though. If you study it, it becomes pretty obvious that in most cases reproduction and death are linked. Death is fundamentally a way to optimize reproduction, to control DNA variability and number of offspring. Also, it is obvious that death has "levels". The cells humans are made of are immortal, in the sense that human cells are capable of living and even reproducing indefinitely, if so directed by DNA. Gametes are meant to survive your death, becoming your children. Now very few cells actually do survive, but that's a constant across pretty much every immortal species. On the other hand, every cell in your body was, in a very real sense, the first bacteria, the first cell ever, billions of years ago. So it certainly is NOT the case that all human cells age, senescence, and die. Only the human as a whole ages, and it is something your cells conspire to do (or conspire not to do, in the case of ovi (~ children), or in the case of cancer cells) At one point, during the period mammals were all still fish, evolution was still experimenting with death, and so fish have much more variation in their aging and death than mammals do. If you go back further, to reptiles, there's even less death. Most reptiles could be alive for thousands of years (even though the odds are wildly against that). Most reptiles die because of slowly advancing accumulated diseases over time (meaning over hundreds of years, a great many diseases, parasites, even physical damage, ... accumulates. No one cause is really causing their death, but combined they introduce such a strain on the organism as a whole it "dies of old age". Except it's not really of old age in the sense like humans age, it's dying of what you might call 99.9% victories against disease. Eventually the 0.1% damage per incident overpowers the metabolism) Unfortunately this does mean that death is built into our cells and a lot of processes depend on aging and death. Therefore we are very far away from curing death: you don't just have to fix the mechanism that "ages" our cells, but you have to find alternate ways of working for everything that depends on it. Resetting the clock may be easier, but even the methods that we currently know (ie. regrowing telomeres) have a bad reputation for causing aggressive cancers, and therefore shortening life rather than prolonging it. Plus, at best if you fix aging in humans entirely, we'll be like reptiles. At that point medicine will have to radically change and every tiny trace of every minor infection will have to be treated as a life threatening condition.
- tosti 5mo ago
  At some point I'm going to be depressed af and would rather end myself.
- blendergeek 5mo ago
  > It really is the case that older lifeforms don't die. All mammals do though. Are naked molerats the one weird exception with mammals?
  - pretzellogician 5mo ago
    Naked molerats live a relatively long time and have many cool longevity adaptations, but they're far from immortal. Max lifespan is under 40 years.
- tornikeo 5mo ago
  This was an insightful comment, thank you for writing. And here's to hoping that the exponentially growing technological capabilities will allow curing death in our (short) lifespans. By God we need that to counteract the ageing population.
- plastic-enjoyer 5mo ago
  > At that point medicine will have to radically change and every tiny trace of every minor infection will have to be treated as a life threatening condition. But is this life? I'm wondering if an immortal life can be a well-lived life
  - sydd 5mo ago
    > I'm wondering if an immortal life can be a well-lived life Why not? It does not mean that we will be some omnipotent god. it just means that we wont age. You can still die from physical trauma, infections, cancer etc. So in practice this would mean that the average human lifespan is not say 70 years, but 120. I'm pretty sure that humanity will eventually get to immortality (why not? We are already controlling most of our environment) but this will not be like an invention of a magic pill, rather the average lifespan will creep up by a decade or so with every generation. Now we're at the point where we know whats actively killing you and what to avoid (we can also cure most infections and diseases) in 30 years most cancers, and likely Alzheimers will be curable too. I'm also sure that lots of aging related conditions will be treatable too (say osteoporosis) in 60 years we might know enough to start reversing aging effects, and fear of cancer will be a thing of the past, just like now bacterial infections. .. and who knows when we will start to regrow limbs and fully reverse aging
tonyhart7 5mo ago
having genetically modified human to become immortal sounds good
- pelagicAustral 5mo ago
  Absolutely, especially if you can mine them for electricity to keep datacentres going
  - tonyhart7 5mo ago
    sorry but human is one of the worse energy generator out there that's why slavery is obsolete, we didn't need them anymore post industrial revolution
    - icwtyjj 5mo ago
      Maybe humans are not the best electricity generator, but slavery is far from obsolete. In fact, there are more slaves today than ever before in history although it's difficult to define exactly what a slave is (https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/41684/is-it-true-that-there-are-more-slaves-in-the-world-now-than-ever-at-one-point-in https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/41684/is-it-true...). Humans may not be so efficient but they sure are cheap, in some places as little as $90 (https://socialinnovation.blog.jbs.cam.ac.uk/2015/03/17/modern-day-slavery-a-flourishing-business-at-90-for-a-human-life/ https://socialinnovation.blog.jbs.cam.ac.uk/2015/03/17/moder...). The sole reason slavery is not as widespread at least in the developed world is because of laws caused by some people having a conscious. When profit is in question unfortunately people will go very very far to minimize cost.
      - tonyhart7 5mo ago
        Yeah but you need to feed them and have cooldown machine can work 24/7 and have infinitely more scalability, do you think we can harness planetary level of energy using human ?? I dn't think so also one biggest part is predictability, human varies by value of work they can provide. with machine you can have one spec sheet and done with the day
contingencies 5mo ago
Heterochronic shifts in a timing‑keeping microRNA are associated with multiple instances of neoteny in plants, Aaron R. Leichty and R. Scott Poethig, PNAS. https://www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10.1073/pnas.2510697122 https://www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10.1073/pnas.2510697122 Key quote: "permanent juvenility has evolved multiple times", nominally making neotony a more highly evolved and expressly desirable characteristic as voted by life itself. Now we can say certainly, at least in ancient Australia (if you're a plant): growing up is for losers!
deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]
izzydata 5mo ago
This is the start of the plot of the book Postmortal by Drew Magary. Not to say that the book accurately depicts what would happen if everyone could freeze their aging, but it does bring up some questions that would need to be answered.
- awei 5mo ago
  A few of these questions are answered in the Commonwealth saga books of Peter Hamilton
- justsocrateasin 5mo ago
  haven't thought about this book for a while. Dang, it was a fun read. I generally love books that take a simple premise and then explore where it would actually go
- deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
throw4847285 5mo ago
It fascinates me how popular science is just a salve for people's fears and anxieties. Science does not provide the kinds of answers people want, so popular science steps in to make unfalsifiable claims about human immortality or whether or not aliens exist, or whatever else is gnawing away at people. I don't have any deeper analysis than that. It's just interesting.
- jerf 5mo ago
  The limits of science, either experimental or observational, are not well taught. It is to the benefit of a lot of people to claim it can do a lot more than is actually possible.
- nicechianti 5mo ago
  [dead]
- deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
- m463 5mo ago
  Every once in a while though, science-y things take off. cars that move with electricity, little helicopters with 4 motors that can hover easily, small cheap computers on one board, ham radios with computers that everyone carries now.
  - throw4847285 5mo ago
    Those are all technologies.
- matthewdgreen 5mo ago
  Science in my lifetime has produced tiny pocket computers, machines that talk and think like humans, cars that drive using the sun as a power source, effective treatments for a variety of afflictions including HIV, and a drug that lets me stay skinny without consciously dieting. Maybe we’ve just developed unrealistically high expectations for what “science” should do.
dwd 5mo ago
Problem is, most of these "coastal" acacias don't live very long. Same with grevilleas. The ones we have planted in our garden will likely need replacing in 7-15 years.

139 points by bryanrasmussen 5mo ago

[dead]

spwa4 5mo ago

The weird thing about death (as in aging, not as in accidents/getting eaten) is that it's "an invention". As in natural selection decided at one point to introduce death. It really is the case that older lifeforms don't die. All mammals do though. If you study it, it becomes pretty obvious that in most cases reproduction and death are linked. Death is fundamentally a way to optimize reproduction, to control DNA variability and number of offspring. Also, it is obvious that death has "levels". The cells humans are made of are immortal, in the sense that human cells are capable of living and even reproducing indefinitely, if so directed by DNA. Gametes are meant to survive your death, becoming your children. Now very few cells actually do survive, but that's a constant across pretty much every immortal species. On the other hand, every cell in your body was, in a very real sense, the first bacteria, the first cell ever, billions of years ago. So it certainly is NOT the case that all human cells age, senescence, and die. Only the human as a whole ages, and it is something your cells conspire to do (or conspire not to do, in the case of ovi (~ children), or in the case of cancer cells) At one point, during the period mammals were all still fish, evolution was still experimenting with death, and so fish have much more variation in their aging and death than mammals do. If you go back further, to reptiles, there's even less death. Most reptiles could be alive for thousands of years (even though the odds are wildly against that). Most reptiles die because of slowly advancing accumulated diseases over time (meaning over hundreds of years, a great many diseases, parasites, even physical damage, ... accumulates. No one cause is really causing their death, but combined they introduce such a strain on the organism as a whole it "dies of old age". Except it's not really of old age in the sense like humans age, it's dying of what you might call 99.9% victories against disease. Eventually the 0.1% damage per incident overpowers the metabolism) Unfortunately this does mean that death is built into our cells and a lot of processes depend on aging and death. Therefore we are very far away from curing death: you don't just have to fix the mechanism that "ages" our cells, but you have to find alternate ways of working for everything that depends on it. Resetting the clock may be easier, but even the methods that we currently know (ie. regrowing telomeres) have a bad reputation for causing aggressive cancers, and therefore shortening life rather than prolonging it. Plus, at best if you fix aging in humans entirely, we'll be like reptiles. At that point medicine will have to radically change and every tiny trace of every minor infection will have to be treated as a life threatening condition.

tosti 5mo ago
At some point I'm going to be depressed af and would rather end myself.
blendergeek 5mo ago
> It really is the case that older lifeforms don't die. All mammals do though. Are naked molerats the one weird exception with mammals?
- pretzellogician 5mo ago
  Naked molerats live a relatively long time and have many cool longevity adaptations, but they're far from immortal. Max lifespan is under 40 years.
tornikeo 5mo ago
This was an insightful comment, thank you for writing. And here's to hoping that the exponentially growing technological capabilities will allow curing death in our (short) lifespans. By God we need that to counteract the ageing population.
plastic-enjoyer 5mo ago
> At that point medicine will have to radically change and every tiny trace of every minor infection will have to be treated as a life threatening condition. But is this life? I'm wondering if an immortal life can be a well-lived life
- sydd 5mo ago
  > I'm wondering if an immortal life can be a well-lived life Why not? It does not mean that we will be some omnipotent god. it just means that we wont age. You can still die from physical trauma, infections, cancer etc. So in practice this would mean that the average human lifespan is not say 70 years, but 120. I'm pretty sure that humanity will eventually get to immortality (why not? We are already controlling most of our environment) but this will not be like an invention of a magic pill, rather the average lifespan will creep up by a decade or so with every generation. Now we're at the point where we know whats actively killing you and what to avoid (we can also cure most infections and diseases) in 30 years most cancers, and likely Alzheimers will be curable too. I'm also sure that lots of aging related conditions will be treatable too (say osteoporosis) in 60 years we might know enough to start reversing aging effects, and fear of cancer will be a thing of the past, just like now bacterial infections. .. and who knows when we will start to regrow limbs and fully reverse aging

tonyhart7 5mo ago

having genetically modified human to become immortal sounds good

pelagicAustral 5mo ago
Absolutely, especially if you can mine them for electricity to keep datacentres going
- tonyhart7 5mo ago
  sorry but human is one of the worse energy generator out there that's why slavery is obsolete, we didn't need them anymore post industrial revolution
  - icwtyjj 5mo ago
    Maybe humans are not the best electricity generator, but slavery is far from obsolete. In fact, there are more slaves today than ever before in history although it's difficult to define exactly what a slave is (https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/41684/is-it-true-that-there-are-more-slaves-in-the-world-now-than-ever-at-one-point-in https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/41684/is-it-true...). Humans may not be so efficient but they sure are cheap, in some places as little as $90 (https://socialinnovation.blog.jbs.cam.ac.uk/2015/03/17/modern-day-slavery-a-flourishing-business-at-90-for-a-human-life/ https://socialinnovation.blog.jbs.cam.ac.uk/2015/03/17/moder...). The sole reason slavery is not as widespread at least in the developed world is because of laws caused by some people having a conscious. When profit is in question unfortunately people will go very very far to minimize cost.
    - tonyhart7 5mo ago
      Yeah but you need to feed them and have cooldown machine can work 24/7 and have infinitely more scalability, do you think we can harness planetary level of energy using human ?? I dn't think so also one biggest part is predictability, human varies by value of work they can provide. with machine you can have one spec sheet and done with the day

contingencies 5mo ago

Heterochronic shifts in a timing‑keeping microRNA are associated with multiple instances of neoteny in plants, Aaron R. Leichty and R. Scott Poethig, PNAS. https://www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10.1073/pnas.2510697122 https://www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10.1073/pnas.2510697122 Key quote: "permanent juvenility has evolved multiple times", nominally making neotony a more highly evolved and expressly desirable characteristic as voted by life itself. Now we can say certainly, at least in ancient Australia (if you're a plant): growing up is for losers!

deleted 5mo ago

[deleted]

izzydata 5mo ago

This is the start of the plot of the book Postmortal by Drew Magary. Not to say that the book accurately depicts what would happen if everyone could freeze their aging, but it does bring up some questions that would need to be answered.

awei 5mo ago
A few of these questions are answered in the Commonwealth saga books of Peter Hamilton
justsocrateasin 5mo ago
haven't thought about this book for a while. Dang, it was a fun read. I generally love books that take a simple premise and then explore where it would actually go
deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]

throw4847285 5mo ago

It fascinates me how popular science is just a salve for people's fears and anxieties. Science does not provide the kinds of answers people want, so popular science steps in to make unfalsifiable claims about human immortality or whether or not aliens exist, or whatever else is gnawing away at people. I don't have any deeper analysis than that. It's just interesting.

jerf 5mo ago
The limits of science, either experimental or observational, are not well taught. It is to the benefit of a lot of people to claim it can do a lot more than is actually possible.
nicechianti 5mo ago
[dead]
deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]
m463 5mo ago
Every once in a while though, science-y things take off. cars that move with electricity, little helicopters with 4 motors that can hover easily, small cheap computers on one board, ham radios with computers that everyone carries now.
- throw4847285 5mo ago
  Those are all technologies.
matthewdgreen 5mo ago
Science in my lifetime has produced tiny pocket computers, machines that talk and think like humans, cars that drive using the sun as a power source, effective treatments for a variety of afflictions including HIV, and a drug that lets me stay skinny without consciously dieting. Maybe we’ve just developed unrealistically high expectations for what “science” should do.

dwd 5mo ago

Problem is, most of these "coastal" acacias don't live very long. Same with grevilleas. The ones we have planted in our garden will likely need replacing in 7-15 years.