interesting topic for eternal life?

[kevin55521]

ok, i don't have any exact details about this subject or how it might work and i'm sure there's much more to it than just dna, but my question is

 

Do you think eternal life is possible?

 

k, now once you answer that, consider this. eternal life IS possible on what sort of basis you put it at.

My theory is from looking at animals that SEEMINGLY live forever I.E. sea turtle or squid. Now these animals are still capable of dieing at any time. But to my knowledge they have an incredibly large lifespan.

 

Now what if you were to take whatever process involved in that animal and through either natural or scientific methods transfer that aspect to more intelligent species - not necessarily humans but making a dog that is capable of living forever. This eventually would take maybe hundreds of years, but when you think about the outcome it would seem worth it to most people.

 

Now there will be a lot of processes about this kind of thing that i dont know about such as how things like sea turtles and squids can live for so many years, but im guessing it would require a lot of changes to how (test animal) would operate its vital systems. at this rate it would take quite a while and be very complicated.

 

Sorry for making you read the entire spiel but think about the possibility of eternal life and how much that would actually be worth and most importantly is it really a possibility if not now then in how long?

[CharonY]

Sea turtles have a life expectancy in the eighties. Squids as most (if not all) cephalopods have a rather low life expectancy. Somewhere around 3-5 years maybe. Also moved to speculations.

[Edtharan]

It kind of depends on what is ment by "eternal".

 

If it is taken to mean "really long", then it is probably possible. If it is ment as "Infinitely long" then definitly not.

 

The reason it can't be infinitely long is that if the universe will eventually contract in a "big Crunch" then that would destroy any life and thus life can't be infinitely long. If the universe expands for ever, then the distribution of resources (energy and materials for repair) gets too spread out to support life and it will also end. If the universe does neither, then entropy will eventually overwhealm and life will end.

 

So, no infinite life.

 

However, a finite, but very long life might be possible, and we are perhaps seeing the first possibilities of it with current medical science.

 

Craig Vetner and his reasearch team has recently unveiled a synthetic cell that they can program with DNA designed and made by them. Of course it is extremely early at this stage, but such a systerm might allow us to clone our cells and fully repair the DNA in them (current cloneing techniques and stem cells can't do this).

 

Then, using tissue engineering techniques (eg: using 3D printing of live cells or scaffolds for stem cells) it will be possible to re-build organs from the body and transplant them back into it and avoid rejection.

 

Also, it will be possible to slowly replace damaged cells from an organ (like the brain) with stem cells (most likely created with Vetner like cells for full rejuvination) by injecting them where needed (this can currently be done with stem cells - although I am not sure if it has been done in humans yet) as the body has some ability to direct and move these cells around a bit.

 

Using these types of techniques it should be possible to allow the body to survive quite a long time (so long as the infrstructure exists).

 

If we look to hypothetical technologies (that might be possible), then there is, of course , computers and Moore's law (every 18 months computing power for cost doubles). This means that by around 2050, computers will be powerful enough to store and run a human brain. They have already simulated a Cortical column (the basic processing structure of the human brain) on a super computer, so this does seem like it might one day be a possiblity.

 

So a finite, but long life might be possible within our lifetimes, but this is only a might.

[Mr Skeptic]

What you're thinking of is called biological immortality. It seems a few creatures on earth actually do have this property. Acquiring it for humans would be difficult, though technically not impossible.

[Moontanman]

Most cephalopods are annual, they live breed and die in a year or less, nautilus are the only relatively long lived cephalopods i know of and no one really knows how long they live but they do live through more than one breeding cycle. Even the Giant octopus lives only a couple of years and the really large squids are equally short lived. There was a known species of octopus that lived through more than one breeding cycle but it is thought to be extinct now, it lived off the coast of Mexico and no specimens have been seen in more than a couple decades.

 

Turtles are long lived, CharonY's estimate is about right, the great whales are though to have long lives as well as do elephants but even the longest lived animals do not live much longer than humans.

 

I can see practical immortality, where the body lives on until some accident kills you. i once saw some studies that showed at the current rate of accidental death almost all humans would be killed by something other than old age well before they hit 200 years old and no one would be expected to live past 500 or so, those numbers maybe off somewhat it's been many years since i read that, but the point is that even if disease and old age were conquered death would still take us well before we reached 1000 years or more just from falling in the bathtub if nothing else....

 

here is a more accurate estimate of the age of animals, the bowhead whale suprised me big time...

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_long-living_organisms

Edited August 20, 2010 by Moontanman

[kevin55521]

ok so my first theory of some animals i guess wasnt very correct, but i took a look at the list of things, and would it be POSSIBLE and i stress this because i know it would take a LONG time before we understand how to do it, but i mean could we somehow slow down the natural growth of our bodies and through that nature it make take maybe 20 years for someone to reach a normal age of 10, and if that were to happen then it would allow them for a much higher rate of learning in the long run right?

[Mr Skeptic]

The ways I understand it, so long as your cells can reproduce fast enough, this should eliminate any aging at the cellular level. Creatures with indeterminate growth often have long lifespans. Trees in particular, have a very thin layer of rapidly reproducing cells and can live for a long time. Of course, for us animals we'd have to scrap and recycle the cells, and this would have to include brain cells and our gigantic spinal nerve cells. We also have an extracellular matrix, which can't be dealt with at the cellular level, and likewise any scar tissue or accumulation of contaminants would be a problem. Also, our cells have a built-in limit to reproduction (see telomeres), probably as a cancer prevention mechanism.

[Greippi]

Telomeres - a region of repetitive DNA that's stuck on the end of a chromosome. Each time a cell replicates, the telomere shortens, until after enough replications the telomere has all been "gobbled up" and genes at the end of the chromosome start being degraded. This limits the cell's capability to replicate endlessly.

Cancer cells up-regulate the enzyme telomerase which elongates telomeres, creating the possiblity for an immortal cell line. Of course, in a human being this isn't desirable as naturally occurring mutations in the cell's DNA will eventually lead to a breakdown in cell proliferation control.

[kevin55521]

so is there any possibility to find the right amount of cancer to make the cells last forever yet not lose control of proliferation?

[Edtharan]

Well we know of certain chemicals that can repair Telomeres (called Telomerase), but delivery would be problematic to every cell in your body, plus you would need a constant supply. If cells make too much of it, they can become cancerous.

 

A better solution would be to use some kind of stem cell (they have made rat stems cells from skin of rats that was able to grow into a complete rat - which the same was done to produce a second generation of cloned rats) where the telomeres have been repaired (it is easier to get the telomerease to a few stem cells than the whole of an organism) and then use those stem cells to grow the replacement part. This is more controlable and you can weed out any cells that turn cancerous or have other problems.

[Mr Skeptic]

so is there any possibility to find the right amount of cancer to make the cells last forever yet not lose control of proliferation?

 

Any amount of cancer is the wrong amount.

 

Telomeres are just one line of defense against cancer. What makes cancer a problem is not so much that the cells can reproduce indefinitely as that they reproduce too much too quickly. If cells go rogue and start reproducing like crazy, normally they would hit the reproduction limit set by the telomere length, and then die off. But if they also find a way around that (telomerase enzyme), then they can keep on growing, and you have cancer. Of course we also do need the telomerase enzymes otherwise our stem cells and reproductive cells would have trouble.

 

Maybe we could take a hint from the naked mole rat. They are nearly immune to cancer, as their cells have an additional mechanism that prevents them from reproducing if they are packed too tightly (contact inhibition). If we could replace telomeres with contact inhibition then perhaps we could have immortal cells without getting too much cancer. But cell aging still just one aspect of aging.