Aging/Life extension/Future regenerative Therapies

sxt

Just watched an interesting cnn video where an expert in Gerontology, Aubrey de grey ( guy with beard) puts forwards thoughts regarding regenerative therapies being possible in the next couple of decades...

[URL="[url]http://us.cnn.com/video/?/video/international/2009/11/30/vs.clinic.immortality.cnn[/url]"][/url]http://us.cnn.com/video/?/video/international/2009/11/30/vs.clinic.immortality.cnn


Any any thoughts on this topic?

Tree

Fancy posting a link to some of his stuff that people can read without buying the book?

sxt

Sorry-removed. Was not intentionly trying to pimp his book, more the synopsis of the what the book was about based on the users reviews/ comments .

I think that he believes that it is more important to look at repairing the damage caused by aging to the body,( Which we currently know already)rather than trying to figure out how to have complete knowlege /understanding how to prevent the processes from happening in the first place.

According to him, there are 7 damaging processes which he first wrote in 1999 " The Mitochondrial Free Radical Theory of Aging"


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategies_for_Engineered_Negligible_Senescence

Part 1 of 3 Question and answers about Mitochondria.( not pretending that I know what that is )

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izNb2CTLIpw&feature=related

This man appears to be well respected in his field of knowledge, I admire that he is dedicated in trying to spread this information to the masses, in an attempt to make it a non tabboo subject.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iYpxRXlboQ

Capt'n Midnight

Mitochondria are if you like symbiotic bacteria that live in the cells of all animals and plants. They have the patent on aerobic respiration. They can generate 15 times more energy from a molecule than we can. This is why we've put up with them for nearly 3 billion years.


Moving Mitochondria DNA to the nucleus is a tall order. They have a slightly different genetic code to us and it would involve a lot of other cellular machinery to get the right proteins onto the other side of their cell membranes. The fact that it hasn't happened in the last 3 billion years might just be a clue to how difficult it is.

BTW
No prizes for guessing the link "midichlorians" the things from Star Wars and IMHO was when George totally lost the plot. Besides if you've read the Dune series you'll see that a lot of Star Wars was done before things like life scanners to detect the energy from all living things.

sxt

Does anybody believe that techonlogy will advance to a stage where aging will be controlled? I think that with will happen eventually whether it is 50 or 500 years from now based on accelerating technology advancement

Aubrey de grey,who is the only outspoken scientist on this topic as far as i am aware, believes that it is firstly important to prove a conclusive impact on the rejunative lifespan of mice , this will be a major fundemental tipping point, and there would then be public pressure to look for the same results in humans

I was curious if anyone that studies biology or has an interest in biology on this forum has any leaning towards this attitude?

Improbable

I only had a minor focus on genetics during my degree, with it being a degree in biochemistry but I think genetics is definitely going to be the main area of study when it comes to this type of development.

Telomeres, regions of repetitive DNA on the ends of chromosomes, have been implicated in the aging process as well as in the "immortality" of cancer cells.. You can read more about it here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telomere