Is aging inevitable, like the rusting of a tin can, or in some sense preprogrammed?
The answers to these questions could drastically improve human health. My latest piece for BioViva Sciences is a concise overview of the comparative biology of aging.
From oversexed marsupials to happy axolotls, the piece covers a lot of ground.
Certain sections could have been fleshed out further, but the piece was already getting long for Medium.
What is aging? Why do some animals live longer than others? What causes different lifespan? What can we learn from the comparative biology of aging?
Being bilingual slows down the negative effects of aging on the brain.
Our brains start slowing down in their once-magical abilities after a certain age.
Scientists have been finding out is that there are methods that can slow down the aging of the brain.
An experimental study has shown that being bilingual slows down the brain’s aging process.
Many of us know from personal experience that our brains start slowing down in their once-magical abilities after a certain point. You can’t remember certain things quite as well, and some calculations start taking longer. It’s a normal part of the “cognitive aging” that scientists have observed in humans. This aging happens at different rates in different people, based on each person’s so-called Cognitive Reserve. Some people may see few changes late in their years, while others may develop serious illnesses that affect their brain’s functions. As some areas of the brain experience changes in grey and white matter, cases of dementia and other neurodegenerative diseases tend to grow with age.
Specific proteins in prokaryotes detect viruses in unexpectedly direct ways.
Bacteria use a variety of defense strategies to fight off viral infection. STAND ATPases in humans are known to respond to bacterial infections by inducing programmed cell death in infected cells. Scientists predict that many more antiviral weapons will be discovered in the microbial world in the future. Scientists have discovered a new unexplored microbial defense system in bacteria.
Researchers uncovered specific proteins in prokaryotes (bacteria and archaea) that detect viruses in unexpectedly direct ways, recognizing critical parts of the viruses and causing the single-celled organisms to commit suicide to stop the infection within a microbial community, according to a press release published in the official website of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on Thursday.
The discovery was made by a team of scientists led by researchers at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT.
“This work demonstrates a remarkable unity in how pattern recognition occurs across very different organisms,” said Feng Zhang, senior author and James, and Patricia Poitras Professor of Neuroscience at MIT.
“It’s been very exciting to integrate genetics, bioinformatics, biochemistry, and structural biology approaches in one study to understand this fascinating molecular system.”
Bacteria use a variety of defense strategies to fight off viral infection, and some of these systems have led to groundbreaking technologies, such as CRISPR-based gene editing.
But what I find even more interesting is that as metaverse tools like Nvidia’s Omniverse become more consumer friendly, the ability to use AI and human digital twins will enable us to create our own worlds where we dictate the rules and where our AI-driven digital twins will emulate real people and animals.
At that point, I expect we’ll need to learn what it means to be gods of the worlds we create, and I doubt we are anywhere near ready, both in terms of the addictive nature of such products and how to create these metaverse virtual worlds in ways that can become the basis for our own digital immortality.
Let’s explore the capabilities of the metaverse this week, then we’ll close with my product of the week: the Microsoft Surface Duo 2.
Researchers at the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine (WFIRM), North Carolina, are investigating the power of cells with regenerative effects. These researchers were the first to identify that stem cells in human urine have the potential for tissue regenerative effects, and are now continuing their investigation.
In a new study, the researchers have focused on how telomerase activity affects the regenerative potential of stem cells in human urine and other types of stem cells. The study was recently published in the journal Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology.
A landmark study that came out in 2005 showed that if you fused the blood systems of old and young mice, a process known as heterochronic parabiosis, it rejuvenated the cells of old mice. It suggested that there was something in the blood and there were two possible explanations; there were rejuvenating factors in the young blood, or there was dilution of pro-aging factors in the old blood. Or some combination of both.
Well, since 2005 more studies have come out. A 2016 study showed that heterochronic blood exchange, so just transfer from young to old, or old to young, without fusing, had a greater impact when old blood was given to young, than when young blood was given to old. In better words, “the inhibitory effects of old blood are more pronounced than the benefits of young”.
So, somewhat ruling out “factors in the young blood”. But even more support came from studies published a few years ago, where again they supported this latter theory. You see, simply diluting the old blood, that is taking plasma out of blood of the old mice and replacing it with saline and albumin (abundant protein found in blood) had the same effect. This process, known as neutral plasma exchange, involves no Frankenstein surgery or young blood vampire like scenario. AMAZING.
But, it still didn’t address why or how? The authors of that paper left us with this rather interesting hypothetical hypothesis graph of what potentially might be happening to some factors present in the blood, but they were otherwise unsure on what or how these beneficial effects were being achieved. What were the important factors to remove?
Paper referenced in the video: Daily Fasting Improves Health and Survival in Male Mice Independent of Diet Composition and Calories. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30197301/
You’ve likely heard the story by now: As the Sun grows old, it will swell up into a red giant. And as it expands, it will certainly swallow Mercury and Venus — and potentially Earth and even Mars — along the way.
This process, called planetary engulfment, is likely common across the galaxy, as aging stars eat up their own planets (and even companion stars or brown dwarfs). But astronomers still don’t understand exactly what happens to an unlucky planet that suddenly finds itself inside its parent star. Now, complex models called hydrodynamical simulations are shedding some light on the phenomenon, showing that factors such as a planet’s mass and the age of its star when it’s engulfed can have profound effects on what happens as the world is overtaken.
Transfusing young mice with blood from older rodents quickly triggers ageing, suggesting that cellular ageing isn’t just a case of wear and tear.
There is a longstanding hypothesis that surgically connecting an old mouse with a young rodent causes a transfer of blood that de-ages the older animal. While this benefits the older mouse, the effects on the young donor rodent were less clear.
To learn more, Irina Conboy at the University of California, Berkeley, and her colleagues transfused blood between young and old mice. Those aged 3 months got blood from animals that were approaching 2 years old.
