There have been several thoughtful articles in this thread, which
will take me some time to digest, but one quick response is possible,
to the teaser I left at the end of my article,
"Brad McCormick, Ed.D." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>pete wrote:
>
[...]
>> Then of course, there's this week's monkey wrench in the works,
>> telomerase. If it turns out to be what it hints that it could be,
>> well, don't get me started....
>What is "telomerase"?
This has been banging about in my brain all week. Telomeres are those
things on the end of chromosomes, of which one is lost every time a
cell divides. It seems that as more of the telomeres are lost, the
subsequent generations of cells become aged, resulting in aged bodies.
They've been known about for a few years, and the logical
trajectory of the research has been to look at the enzyme `telomerase',
which replaces them on germ cells which must be able to keep on
reproducing for generations (hence generations of organisms) without
degrading. The only other known cells which don't lose their telomeres
are cancer cells, so it was expected that simply adding telomerase
to cells might result in cancerous changes. However the research announced
this week says that adding as bit of telomerase to cells (in vitrio)
simply prevents aging, without adversely affecting the cells' function.
The really stunning news is that it also appears to rejuvenate cultures
that are near their `senility' point (non-cancerous cells can only
divide about 32 times before they lose all their telomeres and
consequently their ability to function; they start losing functionality
several divisions before that. The effect can be seen with skin cells:
by about age forty, skin cells have undergone sufficient divisions
that they're beginning to degrade. By age eighty, they have lost so
much of their function that skin bears no resemblance to that of
a child whose cells have undergone few divisions.)
If these results can be duplicated in vivo, well, I think you can
imagine the consequences re population control, bioethics, the
genetic engineering industry...man, the possibilities are simultaneously
terrifying and exhilarating. Money, drugs and immortality. The
basic assumptions of society would be turned upside down. Of course,
these are just preliminary results, and the odds are that it will
prove impossible to synthesize large quantities of the enzyme,
or that it will be impossible to safely and effectively deliver it
to a living organism, but there's that odd chance that it might
turn out to be absurdly easy, something as unexpected and revolutionary
as pcr was a decade ago. Someone was talking about futurists and
"wild cards" a while ago - this is about as wild a card as I could
imagine.
-Pete Vincent
