Posted on 06/30/2005 6:56:03 PM PDT by Pharmboy
Hong Kong (Reuters)-- Scientists in Hong Kong have shed new light on why cell repair is less efficient in older people after a breakthrough discovery on premature aging, a rare genetic disease that affects one in four million babies.
Premature aging, or Hutchison-Gilford Progeria Syndrome (progeria), is obvious in the appearance of a child before it is a year old. Although their mental faculties are normal, they stop growing, lose body fat and suffer from wrinkled skin and hair loss.
Like old people, they suffer stiff joints and a buildup of plaque in arteries which can lead to heart disease and stroke. Most die of cardiovascular diseases before they are 20.
In 2003, a team of scientists in the United States found that progeria was caused by mutation in a protein called Lamin A, which lines the nucleus in human cells.
A team at the University of Hong Kong, led by Zhou Zhongjun, took the research a step further in 2004 and found that mutated Lamin A actually disrupted the repair process in cells, thus resulting in accelerated aging.
The study was published in the July issue of the Nature Medicine journal.
Zhou said the team came by their findings after comparing skin cells taken from two progeria sufferers, normal humans, progeria mice and normal mice.
While damaged DNA was quickly repaired in the healthy human and mice cell samples, the samples taken from the progeria humans and mice had difficulty repairing damaged DNA.
"Mutation in this protein (Lamin A) can cause defects in repair and thus lead to progeria," Zhou, a research assistant professor with the biochemistry department at the University of Hong Kong, said in an interview.
"DNA damage is not effectively repaired in cells with defective Lamin A but very efficiently repaired in normal cells."
The study highlights the importance of Lamin A to the repair process, and any mutation to Lamin A that disrupts repair will bring about aging, Zhou said.
Having established the link between Lamin A and repair, Zhou is using major findings from other research he did in 2002 to work on his next project, a product which he hopes could kill cancer cells.
Zhou, Professor Karl Tryggvason in Sweden's Karolinska Institute and a Spanish research group found in 2002 that the enzyme Zmpste 24 was responsible in converting prelamin A to functional Lamin A.
Zhou's laboratory is now developing inhibitors to Zmpste 24, which he hopes to apply to tumors. These inhibitors should theoretically disrupt Lamin A production, thwart the repair function in cancer cells, and bring on their premature aging and death.
"We're now trying to develop inhibitors to Zmpste 24 and apply it to tumor cells," he said.
I'd think about investing in birth-control pills, or at least the companies that make them.
And private accounts for Social Security start looking much more attractive as well!
And invest in companies that make robots, too.
Can you imagine these 70 year old billionaires if they had another 700 years to multiply their fortune?
They would own the solar system, maybe the Milky Way; the Hubble volume would take a little longer.
In fact, I wonder if they aren't really 70 at all, but maybe 140 and just say they are 70 to put us off our guard and make us think they are just too smart for us.
It gives a little more impetus to the dictum, "You only have to get rich once!"
Doesn't it?
Yeah. There would still be a lot of people who don't get it together, not even in 1000 years.
Heinlein seemed to think it would be challenging to start over occasionally.
If one felt perpetually youthful, why not?
Still ... compound interest...
The pictures of those poor souls nearly brings tears to one's eyes.
Have some class, pal.
There was a book of stories on the subject of immortality. How would you deal with it? Everything, even Heinlein, would get kind of plebian. You could probably master every musical instrument, all the math there is, run every white water creek and climb every face of every mountain and you would still be faced with immortality. I suppose you could get a 40 acre farm and tend it with scissors to keep busy.
If the average lifespan was 700 years, think about where you'd sit down.
Seriously, the progeria research seems just terrific. Those poor victims are basically youngsters or youths who never had the opportunity to gain the wisdom that their countenances seem to dislay.
We have too many of these uncurable kinds of diseases and disorders as it is, so Godspeed to the dedicated researchers who work to solve these tragic health matters.
And God bless the victims. May they all be helped.
You could say the same thing about the afterlife, if there is one. That's something I've pondered from time to time. Would you get tired of Heaven? It's a rhetorical question more than asking for an answer. We'll find out eventually, I suppose.
Bad effect: living with the liberals' whining for 600 years...
There is an old Gahan Wilson drawing of some angels standing around on a cloud smoking cigs looking bored.
Clifford Simak already answered this -- "Time is the simplest thing."
We are already dealing with it. The Human Being lives twice as long as other creatures of the same general size. Our lifespan has already been increased.
For me, it is a philosophy. If you are ninety years old, and you decide to plant a fruit tree, do so!
Plan for the future as though you will live forever, and enjoy each moment as though it could be your last.
You can't go wrong with that!
Time is the dimension of consciousness and there is only now. What's done is not anymore and what will be isn't either. Even if we could live forever, how could we possibly know that we are in the process of living forever? Living forever now? Seems like apples and oranges.
The now of consciousness gets interrupted from time to time. For all intents, now is forever.
Just remember, if you die in your sleep, you won't know it until you wake up.
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