Friday, July 24, 2015

Yet more evidence for programmed aging

Morimoto and Labbadia found the genetic switch occurs between two major tissues in an organism that determine the future of the species: the germline and the soma (the body tissues of the animal, such as muscle cells and neurons). Once the germline has completed its job and produced eggs and sperm -- necessary for the next generation of animals -- it sends a signal to cell tissues to turn off protective mechanisms, starting the decline of the adult animal...
"In a system where we can actually do the experiments, we discover a switch that is very precise for aging," he said. "All these stress pathways that insure robustness of tissue function are essential for life, so it was unexpected that a genetic switch is literally thrown eight hours into adulthood, leading to the simultaneous repression of the heat shock response and other cell stress responses."

The germline starts the slow suicide mechanism known as aging.


Thursday, July 16, 2015

cool vid

Nice quote

“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”-Richard Dawkins

Post on christianity over at kurzweilai

I am afraid I am out of energy and enthusiasm for this topic.
Spike signing off for now.-Spikosauropod, kurzweilai
Humanity has existed for over 100,000 years. Presumably all of these humans, if they're good, and all of those who do not hear of christianity now or in the future are so-called "saved". What purpose does the existence of that religion serve other than to damn many rational beings who will doubt it, and not accept it ,on mere witness testimony of known cultists? According to many of the faith, refusing to join the religion is an act of damnation(how convenient for them...). So even by its own logic, according to many, it is best forgotten, and no longer spread to children nor adults.
The idea that an omnipotent omniscient being commanded genocide, performed genocide, murdered children by animals devouring them for making fun of a bald men... A god that supposedly speaks the following
“The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, 7 maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.”-Yahweh

That such an obviously fictitious tribal god entity is related to the divine in any way is ridiculous. Anyone who reads the old testament knows the god being found there is a small pathetic petty and immoral monster.
We know adam and eve are fiction, we know noah is fiction, we know that moses most likely is fiction as well. A god of a work of fiction.
To claim you're that god, a fictional god of a work of fiction, a petty fictional immoral monster, is ridiculous. Originally people talked about original sin bringing death and Jesus ' need to die to redeem us in part from our inherited original sin, to save us from death caused by it. After all when asked why do we die? they said adam brought death into the world through disobedience, but now we know adam is at best a metaphor, death is part of the world through the designs of the world, and immoral behavior exists to the extent that it is beneficial evolutionarily speaking, so it too is part of the design.
Just look at the sheer ignorance of the original followers of Christianity, the founders

Romans 5:12-21
12 Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men[a] because all sinned— 13 for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. 14 Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.
15 But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man's trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many. 16 And the free gift is not like the result of that one man's sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification. 17 For if, because of one man's trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.
18 Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness[c] leads to justification and life for all men. 19 For as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous. 20 Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, 21 so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

1 Corinthians 15:22
22 For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.

Neither Jesus nor his followers knew adam did not exist, and that death was part of the nature of the world from the very beginning as was humans ability to act immorally.

Friday, July 10, 2015

someone's video commentary on glymphatic system

Another post regarding aging on kurzweilai

[quote]
If de Grey had been serious, he would have funded the Fruit Fly Prize (1 month lifespan) instead a preposterous Mouse Prize (3 year lifespan) where it takes eons to measure progress!-melajara,kurzweilai
[/quote]


All it would take is extensive genetic tweaking with the changes that occurred in Michael Rose's flies to thoroughly break that record

 [quote]
Michael Rose, a population geneticist, used artificial selection to produce fruit flies with a life span of 50 days- 1994  book-link
[/quote]

Some other MORE RECENT[2011 article] comments suggest Rose has done well, since then, by now at least for average lifespan quadrupling it, exceeding even previous records

[quote]
Similarly, gene expression changes are the major explanation for the results reported by Dr. Michael Rose, who claims to have quadrupled the average life span of fruit flies merely by selective breeding.
 
“The idea that aging is just a cumulative process of damage is fundamentally incorrect,” Rose commented when I spoke to him about his work. As a coauthor of the new book Does Aging Stop? from Oxford University Press, Rose points out that some organisms already cease to age late in life. “We have fly populations where 40% of the cohort stops aging,” he says....-link
[/quote]

The thing is from what I hear evolution mostly conserves protein structure and mainly tends to change gene  regulation.  Drugs and nutraceuticals can change gene regulation, as can dietary interventions such as calorie restriction, obviously within limits, but already humans are quite long lived lasting decades free of disease, the jump from that to agelessness might require either extensive further changes in regulation or just a small tweak to reach agelessness.

My belief is that neurons are likely near ageless cells if kept in an appropriate environment(that is if accompanied by nonaging glia and nonaging vasculature), so the body does seem to have the key to agelessness of cells built in.

[quote]
"a mouse is fully worn out after 3 years when it takes 30 years to tear down a naked mole-rat."-melajara,kurzweilai
 [/quote]

Not all of the mouse is designed to break down

[quote]
In a new study from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, mouse brain cells implanted into rats survived as long as the rats did, double the average mouse lifespan.-link
[/quote]

And they say the neurons could likely live even longer with the exact same genes if they were transplanted into even longer lived hosts.

Now look at that the neurons are one of the most metabolically active cells of all the cells, and most of their energy goes towards their function, if I'm not mistaken.   Despite this intensive use of chemical energy, which should result in side-products of metabolism, the cells can handle it, and even without any genetic change they can live more than double the original mice host lifespan.

Think about that for a second most cells do not need to perform functions as energy intensive as neurons, and even neurons themselves can last for over double the lifespan of the host.    That is the mouse genome already has a genetic program that is able to allow its cells to last at the very least twice as long as mice last yet mice don't last that long.    If that doesn't smell of programmed aging I don't know what to tell you.   It is clear the mouse has the genes to protect cells even with extensive metabolic activity(metabolic activity related mainly to function) in such a way as to double the lifespan of the component cells, yet it doesn't do so for the rest of the body.

One of my posts regarding aging on kurzweilai

De Grey talks about garbage accumulation and recycling it in situ as a solution, but usually unless you have energy to spare the intelligent thing to do with garbage is not to recycle it on site, but to throw it out, and for someone or something to pick it up and take it to an appropriate disposal area.(eventually it exits the body and after that it is somebody else's problem, and someone else eventually recycles it.)

The body has the lymphatic system, and the brain has the glymphatic system

[quote]
Throughout most of the body, a complex system of lymphatic vessels is responsible for cleansing the tissues of potentially harmful metabolic waste products, accumulations of soluble proteins and excess interstitial fluid. ...

[In the brain the glymphatic system performs this function... ]
The breakdown of the brain’s innate clearance system may in fact underlie the pathogenesis of neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and Huntington’s disease, in addition to ALS and chronic traumatic encephalopathy. -link
[/quote]


[quote]
Even our brains need to take out the trash.

Researchers from the University of Rochester Medical Center found that a waste-flushing system in the brain, called the glymphatic system, is most active when we sleep -- nearly 10 times more so than during periods of wakefulness, in fact.

Plus, during sleep, brain cells shrink in size by 60 percent to better allow for the removal of waste from the brain.-link
 [/quote]

Despite aging glia and aging vasculature(in part due to the telomere shortening), the oldest human lived for over 122 years, they didn't have dementia when they died, iirc, and died from choking according to some sources.   Those exact same billions of single cell neurons were alive at high metabolism for those entire 122 years without failing, providing mental sanity even till the end of life, even with aging surrounding tissue adversely affecting them(tissue responsible for garbage removal, nutrients, etc). 

[quote]
Using this method, Dr Frisén has shown that most cells in the body are less than 10 years old. -link
[/quote]

  If garbage accumulation was a problem for a cell with an insignificant fraction of that[neural] lifespan, as most of the rest of the cells in the body are, pray tell how did these billions of cells managed to continue working at all decade after decade after decade?

Also to still be able to sustain high metabolic activity even at 122 years of age, the mitochondria must be working to at least some decent degree, probably a bit adversely affected by surrounding aging tissue, but there seem to be mechanisms to preserve mitochondria quality like mitoptosis, there appears to be genetic regulation that keeps mitochondria quality in check, and it is dysfunction of this regulation that may be behind a loss of mitochondria quality.

[quote]
Thus, suggesting that mitochondrial dysfunction is a good enough reason for eliminating mitochondria and as Dr. Skulachev says, mitochondria follow the samurai’s law; “it’s better to die than to be wrong”.-link
[/quote]

As for cancer we have the case of cancer free centenarians who smoked two packs a day for decades, and died cancer free.   Would be very unlikely cancer didn't actually pop up.   The likeliest scenario is it popped up and the immune system handled it, at least this seems the case for some fraction of the population.-link to original thread

Wednesday, July 8, 2015

heads up

I've heard this july 15 2015 might be prime day over at amazon.com and might have more and better deals than black friday.