Registered: Jul 2000
Location: Sedona, Arizona
Posts: 19119

Wonder's animal hour, today- Animals &Aging

Studying fruit flies, scientists are finding that the aging process is something that does not creep up on a being but tends to slam dunk at a given point, depending upon the type animal. The flies only live for about two days so they were a good choice to study. It was found that the flies do fine up until they are aboput two days old and then the aging process slams them. organs fail, diseases set in, etc and the fly usually doesn't survive this. What is interesting is that those that do, the aging process basically stops. These flies live on for days longer than their sibling, often outliving their great grandchildren.

There is another fascinating creature called a hydra, a tiny aquatic animal that has a very interesting capability... Immortality.
This creature reproduces asexually (producing a new offspring as a "bud" on their body, every other day) and had what was considered an average lifespan of about a month. It was discovered that if the buds were removed before developing, the hydras could live for at least four years (this is how loong they have lived so far and they are still going strong) and because the replace their cells rapidly, (they have replaced themselves over 60 times in 4 years) they could conceivably live forever.
One thing that helps with this is that they are basically made up of stem cells.
Interesting stuff methinks.

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Registered: Jul 2000
Location: my mother's bloody womb
Posts: 7148

this was cool...i feel smarter, but in a useless kind of way...

heehee.

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Registered: Aug 2001
Location: Germany
Posts: 496

Interesting. I bet this knowledge will be put to good use and help the rich to live forever.

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For you, for you and for W!

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Registered: Jul 2000
Location: Minneapolis, MN
Posts: 10231

quote:

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Originally posted by Denominator:
Interesting. I bet this knowledge will be put to good use and help the rich to live forever.

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Registered: Jul 2001
Location: East Texas
Posts: 355

Cool..wonder (are you the one who had to unload all the snakes at the airport?)

Anyway, when I was in school a few years back we studied lysomes..
In animal cells (especially mammals) one of the primary structural features is the endoplasmic reticulum.
Its in two parts...rough ER and smooth ER.
The rough ER appears to have a bumpy suface under magnification because it it producing something called lysomes.
I don't remember their exact purpose in cellular function but I do know that when they out live their usefullness, they explode.
All the time in your body these tiny cellular pieces are exploding. They may act like a biologicval timer, telling the body to replace the cells.
As you age, though, they start to explode in greater and greater numbers. Until they destroy cells at a faster rate than you can replace them.
This coincides with the rapid deterioration we experience physically in our later life.

Now they other thing is a group of cellular parts called telomeres.
Everytime a cell divides (miotically, I believe is normal cells, and meiotically is sex cells?)the telomeres shorten.
Until finally they are too short to adequately replicate.
Remeber Dolly the cloned sheep?
She died rather mysteriously at much too young an age...except that she was cloned from adult sheep cells and her telomeres where way to short to allow her a long life.
That is the best explination I have heard.

We have many many safety features built into us to prevent long life.

After removing all predation, almost all birthing conflicts, most diseases, famine, drought, and even the inquisition....we are still only designed to last as long as our teeth.

Adding years to our now healthy and properly medicated bodies is getting trickier and messier.

On more fronts than the physiological one.


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I'll get to that later.

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