Submitted by MirielTheDog t3_yi3po7 in explainlikeimfive
[removed]
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I3reezyCarrot t1_iuh7hy7 wrote
I’m going to assume this special telomere repairing protein cannot be used in humans?
JaggedMetalOs t1_iuhe9nb wrote
The special telomere repairing protein (telomerase) is active in Humans. It's what resets the telomere length in embryos, and it's also active (but not enough to fully replenish them) in any body tissues that need to regenerate.
One place it's fully active is in cancer cells. It's theorized one of the functions of shortening telomeres is to prevent cancer, because any cancer starting to grow will burn through its telomeres and die, unless the cancer cell is able to mutate to repair its telomeres.
rasa2013 t1_iuh22a9 wrote
There's a lot of things that can spontaneously kill anyone. Random blood clot in the wrong place, for example. And old age predisposes you to having those kinds of events and also not recovering from those kinds of events.
E.g., say an otherwise healthy person gets an active heart attack. Some people, for unknown reasons, their heart will try to power through the problem and keep pumping. It hurts and is not good obviously, but it could buy them time to get treatment. But strangely, some people's hearts will encounter this problem and just stop functioning. We don't really know why every time. It's partly genetic luck though.
Otherwise, death is usually from a chronic condition of some kind, not entirely unexpected. It's a process. You don't just die all at once. Your body exhausts itself slowly building from the primary chronic problem, like a bad liver. And it's in your sleep because eventually, your body doesn't have the resources to actually keep your brain fully conscious.
For example, my grandma was around for two weeks after we all agreed to stop the main healthcare and go for hospice instead. She was awake and "fine" in the beginning. no real bad pain or anything. You wouldn't know just from looking at her that she was dying. we could chat. But she no longer felt hunger and her body didn't really produce waste normally. as the time went on, she spent more time asleep. And eventually she didn't wake up much at all.
Seeker_Of_Knowledge- t1_iuha9fl wrote
The inconsistency man. You said "we don't know why" and then in the next second you said "it is partly genetic luck".
Upper-Wolf6040 t1_iuhi5hu wrote
He said "we don't really know why every time, Its partly genetic luck".
The key words are "every time" and "partly"
Seeker_Of_Knowledge- t1_iuhii99 wrote
And this is exactly why I said inconsistency.
If it one time a genetic and the other time it is not genetic. Then it is clearly shouldn't be taken as a reliable data. Hell, it shouldn't be even taken as assumption.
ixramuffin t1_iuhkhrj wrote
Medicine deals with averages. We rarely know what is happening to individuals. Saying that "something is partly genetic" and "we don't know why every time" are not exclusive at all. On average, genetics has an influence. We just usually don't know "when" and "for whom".
Seeker_Of_Knowledge- t1_iuk2tv5 wrote
Oh I see the point. Thanks, it now make sense.
Medicine deals with averages is super interesting concept I haven't thought about before.
Upper-Wolf6040 t1_iuhjf61 wrote
That still doesn't make sense. They're not saying one time is genetic and the other time is not genetic. I think youre misinterpreting what they're saying.
rasa2013 t1_iuieeeb wrote
That's an interesting interpretation. Genetics plays a role, but we don't know the specifics. We just know it's involved. Ergo, we don't really know why.
Seeker_Of_Knowledge- t1_iuhahmd wrote
Some reasons are known and there also some unknown reason (or at least can't be explained by the current science and there is also a chance those unknown reasons would never be figured out)
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Kaitlyn_The_Magnif t1_iuh1k45 wrote
When our DNA strands are replicated during cell duplication, the very ends of the strands are destroyed. That's ok because on these ends, there are caps called telomeres. The telomeres are very long, so they can be broken down bit by bit over decades of replicating. But eventually, the caps run out and our actual DNA begins getting destroyed. Our cells and organs can no longer replicate and function, so the cells die.
Interestingly, there are a few organisms that have a protein that repairs telomeres. This allows them to live forever, as long as they aren't killed by something.
The lobster, for example, and a more recently-discovered jellyfish that can actually reverse its aging and go back into its younger forms using this process.