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Extracts (13)

certain metabolic actions accumulate lifetime damage, and each kind of damage has to be treated individually, and the treatments coordinated with each other as well as with the ordinary functioning of the organism

cell loss or atrophy is ameliorated by exercise, growth factors, and directed stem cells

cancerous mutations are identified by massively parallel DNA sequencing and transcriptome sequencing and dissolved by targeted gene therapies and telomerase manipulation; chemo and radiation therapies are now highly targeted, using monoclonal antibodies, avimers and designed proteins

death-resistant cells that are senescent in their function must not be allowed to transform into harmful forms, but must rather be targeted by suicide genes and immune response

undamaged mitochondria are introduced into cells suffering mitochondrial mutations

lipofuscin is one kind of accumulated junk inside our cells that can’t be carried away by the immune system. Amyloid plaques are another. Enzymes adapted from bacteria and molds that completely digest animal bodies will upon introduction flourish until their nutrient runs out, and this absence activates inserted suicide genes in the enzymes. Extracellular aggregates are removed by vaccinations that stimulate immune responses, including a state of enhanced phagocytosis. Complications include

random extracellular cross-linking of cells makes for stiffness, but the links have been successfully broken with enzymes designed to

the manipulation of telomerase has proved to be a very difficult balancing act in certain cell types: telomeres too long and you get a cancerous immortality, telomeres too short and you quickly hit the Hayflick limit and replication is no longer successful

while DNA repair involves a DNA polymerase with an exonuclease-proofreading capability, resulting in high-fidelity DNA repair, RNA polymerases do not have this and therefore make many more mistakes during gene transcription; this is a potent driver of evolution

pleiotropy is the phenomenon of a gene causing good effects in the young organism that turn into bad effects in the same organism when aged. It is very often the source of the problems that bisexual hormone treatments are designed to

hormesis (eagerness) is an eventually advantageous biological response to low exposures of toxins or stressors. This process, sometimes called eustress, and related to Mithridatism (after King Mithridates, who ate small amounts of poison so that a larger amount would not kill him), has been put forth as explaining in principle why the Earth sabbatical might help maximize longevity

strongest correlations to longevity include smaller body size and exposure to both androgens and estrogens; these two are also multipliers of each other, to the extent that no small androgyn or gynandromorph has yet been known to die of natural causes. The oldest are over 210 years old, and their potential life span cannot be calculated at this time. There are likely to be more such subjects to study as this finding becomes better known

actuarial escape velocity is defined as occurring when a year of medical research adds more than a year’s worth of longevity to the total population. Nothing even close to this has ever been achieved, and emerging signs of an asymptotic curve in progress suggest this velocity may never

premature declaration of huge longevity gains has been called kyriasis or Dorian Gray syndrome or simply the hope for immortality

lengthen the telomeres in certain cells by temporary increase of telomerase in these cells. As different cells lose telomeres at different rates, drug treatments have to be tagged to certain kinds of cells only, and inadvertent cancers

biogerontology, humbled time and again by unexpected

the famous calorie-restricted vitamin-enhanced diet acted to feminize gene expression in many ways that proved decisive for the longevity effect, so now gender hormone therapy is tailored to create this feminizing effect without the necessity of the caloric restriction, which never caught on

if you recall the old comparison of the human body to a Havana Chevolet, with all moving parts replaced when they broke, then the problem could be compared to metal fatigue in the chassis and axles. In other words, the “seven deadly sins” of senescence are not the only sins. Unrepaired DNA damage, noncancerous mutation, the drift of chromatin states—all these eventually create “aging damage” hard to detect or counteract. None are currently amenable to repair. This probably explains the

take skin cells from people, turn them into pluripotent stem cells, put these in a protein bath of the right kind and they form a neural tube, which is the start of the nervous system that will grow the spinal cord from one end and the brain from the other. Take slices of neural tube and direct them with other protein stimulants to become cells of different parts of the brain, like cortex cells. Test for firing.

arrhythmia, stroke, sudden collapse, quick decline, immune loophole, brain wave irregularity, superinfection, heart attack, apparently causeless instantaneous death (ACID), etc.