Scientist Uncovers Internal Clock Able to Measure Age of Most Human Tissues

[Nancy LC]

Scientist Uncovers Internal Clock Able to Measure Age of Most Human Tissues (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/10/131020203006.htm)

This could be something that might be useful to determine which diets and/or supplements are best for human health, rather than having to wait 50 years for someone to get old. :lol:

[aj_cohn]

FTA:
In an unexpected finding, the cells of children with progeria, a genetic disorder that causes premature aging, appeared normal and reflected their true chronological age.
Oops! If the scientist's internal clock doesn't account for this disease, he's got some work to do in defining the clock.

[Nancy LC]

Or the disease doesn't work the way they assumed it did.

[M Levac]

I think this is most telling:
Everyone grows older, but scientists don't really understand why.
Here's my idea on this. Everybody knows when we're old, but nobody knows how we get there. Rather, nobody knows how to explain it so it makes any sense. We can see the association between time and age, but we also see anomalies like young people who look older than they really are, and old people who look younger. Evidently, time isn't the only factor here.

In the article, they associate age with disease like breast cancer for example. In experiments, for example Feinman's ketogenic/cancer, we find diet has an effect on cancer. Put this together and we find there's an association between diet and age. Cynthia Kenyon would agree, I think.

The idea of the article however, is that this age clock is the cause, and disease/age is the effect. It's possible, but I don't think so. Instead, I doubt that genes, which are the product of millions of years of evolution, are programmed to kill the organism at a certain time, regardless of the health status of this organism, if it reached its deadline. Instead, I think longest life possible is a survival advantage due to reproduction potential. So, if there is an association between this DNA clock and age/disease, it's because they are both effects of the same cause.

On the other hand, I can see how genes could keep time, and from this do stuff that are age-appropriate or time-appropriate. Growth is done through iterations of the same instructions repeated a certain number of times. This means there's two things in play here. First, is the thing that is grown, then is the number of times this thing is grown. A fractal could do this. Keeping time with similar mechanisms is quite possible. Based on what I know about genetics, I think we're talking about epigenetics. Imagine we switch on/off certain genes in sequence, until all the genes are on/off, then the next instruction by the enzyme that zips through those genes is different from all the previous ones, including the switching back on/off of all of them all at once, and the sequence repeats. This would give us the ability to manage day/night activities like sleep for example, or longer periods like the menstrual cycle.

On a side note, I find it just a tiny bit absurd that UCLA has filed a provisional patent on that genetic clock, as if they wanted to acquire the right to produce new humans, or at least the right to grow old. Just a tiny bit absurd.

[rightnow]

This is a little offbeat since it's a snippet from one of my 'esoteria' blogs which I normally do not mix with my 'practical' stuff (for which I'm sure everyone here is grateful lol).

But there is part of me that wonders how much we are misinterpreting in our overdose of specialized reductionism when it comes to 'age'.

I started thinking about money, and then about time. And it sort of hit me like an epiphany that is tough to put into words (or, you can, but it just sounds stupidly so-what when you do), that everything in our world, in our reality, in our body, in our universe, comes down to only one currency in the end: energy.

And the more I thought about it, the more I realized how true it was, until I got to the body, and realized (somewhat startled) that this is what human death is: it’s running out of energy. Literally.

It isn’t about age, except that age causes us to increase our ‘energy loss’ exponentially, almost like a car that becomes less and less efficient over time. That varies based on genetics, the person, etc. It isn’t about disease, except that disease itself reflects a sub-standard amount of energy, an energy crisis that is system-wide but especially specific to one location; it is like a brown-spot on the leaf of a plant, or a withering of a branch, and the tree may survive if it can shed that leaf or branch, but may not if the core problem is in the roots instead. It isn’t about injury, except that if injury abruptly stops the ability of the body to continue cycling energy, it is promptly dead. Everything that sustains our liver cells is the same stuff that sustains the rest of us.

Maybe so-called 'aging' is the reduction of energy in certain specific elements of the body is all. The 'why' is the big question I suppose.

PJ