This is an immensely stupid thread.

Quote: Original post by LeChuckIsBack
Nobel Prize in Medicine

So if the body production of telomerase can be stabilized, one can achieve immortality.

That's an almighty leap - where'd the article mention immortality, at all? It merely spoke of (in an extremely dumbed-down manner) a specific biological mechanism which protects a tiny part of the cell, the chromosomes, from degradation.

Quote: Original post by owl
I don't think we will be able to modifiy an adult creature's DNA to make it live longer/forever in this century. But I do believe that if scientist happen to recognize the DNA encoding for aging they could be able to fertilize/clone one with it's DNA modified to that end.

I mean, a fly with wings on it's head it's almost like a fly that don't age.

I think the key is to find a way to make the tissues that can't be regenerated (like neurons, all kind of them) to do so... like...

{brainstorming}

... A pregnant cell: That'd be a cell that contains a latent cell of it's same kind inside itself and that at the moment of it's death the cell within takes the place of the dead one.

{/brainstorming}

This post takes the cake.
Really, a gene specifying that the organism must age? Reproduction was life's answer to the perplexing dilemma of degradation and failure of the organism over time - if that problem could be addressed by merely plucking the ageing allele from the genetic code, don't you think mother nature would've tried that by now?

Given how fucked up the world is, do you really want to live forever?

Just a thought.

Quote: Original post by Fenrisulvur
This is an immensely stupid thread.

Quote: Original post by owl
I don't think we will be able to modifiy an adult creature's DNA to make it live longer/forever in this century. But I do believe that if scientist happen to recognize the DNA encoding for aging they could be able to fertilize/clone one with it's DNA modified to that end.

I mean, a fly with wings on it's head it's almost like a fly that don't age.

I think the key is to find a way to make the tissues that can't be regenerated (like neurons, all kind of them) to do so... like...

{brainstorming}

... A pregnant cell: That'd be a cell that contains a latent cell of it's same kind inside itself and that at the moment of it's death the cell within takes the place of the dead one.

{/brainstorming}

This post takes the cake.
Really, a gene specifying that the organism must age? Reproduction was life's answer to the perplexing dilemma of degradation and failure of the organism over time - if that problem could be addressed by merely plucking the ageing allele from the genetic code, don't you think mother nature would've tried that by now?

I'm sorry Dr. House. I fail to see why nature would want to have people like you bugging everyone else like forever.

Maybe death is the price all living creatures have to pay in order to get rid of your kind.

:)

Quote: Original post by Fenrisulvur
This post takes the cake.
Really, a gene specifying that the organism must age? Reproduction was life's answer to the perplexing dilemma of degradation and failure of the organism over time - if that problem could be addressed by merely plucking the ageing allele from the genetic code, don't you think mother nature would've tried that by now?

There's no evolutionary advantage in immortality. In fact, it would hinder it. A shorter lived organism with faster reproduction evolves faster than a longer lived with slower reproduction. Thus, natural evolution will favour the former.

Quote: Original post by Yann L

Quote: Original post by Fenrisulvur
This post takes the cake.
Really, a gene specifying that the organism must age? Reproduction was life's answer to the perplexing dilemma of degradation and failure of the organism over time - if that problem could be addressed by merely plucking the ageing allele from the genetic code, don't you think mother nature would've tried that by now?

There's no evolutionary advantage in immortality. In fact, it would hinder it. A shorter lived organism with faster reproduction evolves faster than a longer lived with slower reproduction. Thus, natural evolution will favour the former.

yea

I would live forever; it would give me time to learn every instrument, and all aspects of science and biology.

If a human could live forever, what would happen to religion? No death, no judgment day, and with no judgment day, no sin?

Quote: Original post by Chris Reynolds
If a human could live forever, what would happen to religion? No death, no judgment day, and with no judgment day, no sin?

Not according to Christianity. Judgment day was/is supposed to apply as much to living people as the dead.

Quote: Original post by owl
I'm sorry Dr. House. I fail to see why nature would want to have people like you bugging everyone else like forever.

Maybe death is the price all living creatures have to pay in order to get rid of your kind.

:)

Ad hominem - another stupid contribution. If you must rebut, try a well-reasoned counter-argument instead, like:

Quote: Original post by Yann L

Quote: Original post by Fenrisulvur
This post takes the cake.
Really, a gene specifying that the organism must age? Reproduction was life's answer to the perplexing dilemma of degradation and failure of the organism over time - if that problem could be addressed by merely plucking the ageing allele from the genetic code, don't you think mother nature would've tried that by now?

There's no evolutionary advantage in immortality. In fact, it would hinder it. A shorter lived organism with faster reproduction evolves faster than a longer lived with slower reproduction. Thus, natural evolution will favour the former.

^This is a good argument.

Anyway: I don't think fast reproduction precludes immortality. It may bring ecological balance issues into play, sure - a suddenly "immortal" predator may overpopulate and cull the lower levels of the food chain, choreographing its own endangerment as a species and devastating the entire ecosystem - predators face similar problems brought on by overbreeding.

I suspect food would stabilize the predator base, though. Prey would become scarcer through increased demand, and would eventually adapt to a larger presence of able-bodied predators, and the less capable/fortunate predators would just die of famine instead of old age. The fact that a hypothetical un-ageing animal could plod along for ~5000 years because none of its great-great-great-great-grandchildren have developed any evolutionary advantages to outperform it is of no real consequence, aside from it refining its abilities with experience, and having greater time to spread its genes (thus possible evolutionary advantage).

If the premise is that an immortality-capable species would favour a genetic mutation which reimplements bio-degradation with age explicitly (as posited by owl), I'm not convinced.

Without reproduction, we never would have adapted. Reproduction is a means for micro and macro evolution and therefore comes before immortality in importance, imo.

But who's to say the human race needs to continue evolving? Haven't we reached a ceiling of necessary adaptations? We are clearly dominant on the planet and do not face any dangers for extinction other than catastrophic events and what we've done to ourselves.

Quote: Original post by Fenrisulvur

Quote: Original post by owl
I'm sorry Dr. House. I fail to see why nature would want to have people like you bugging everyone else like forever.

Maybe death is the price all living creatures have to pay in order to get rid of your kind.

:)

Ad hominem - another stupid contribution. If you must rebut, try a well-reasoned counter-argument instead, like:

Quote: Original post by Yann L

Bleh.

Quote: Original post by Yann L

Quote: Original post by Fenrisulvur
This post takes the cake.
Really, a gene specifying that the organism must age? Reproduction was life's answer to the perplexing dilemma of degradation and failure of the organism over time - if that problem could be addressed by merely plucking the ageing allele from the genetic code, don't you think mother nature would've tried that by now?

There's no evolutionary advantage in immortality. In fact, it would hinder it. A shorter lived organism with faster reproduction evolves faster than a longer lived with slower reproduction. Thus, natural evolution will favour the former.

If such a mutation were possible, I find the idea that such an organism would always be out-evolved a bit far-fetched. Surely such a massive advantage would be manifest in nature if it were possible through the normal evolutionary process. We do still see organisms which have remained unmodified for many millions of years without being out-evolved. Look at the crocodile or shark, for example.