Latest News and Developments about Humankind's Drive Towards Biological Immortality

The cycle of life is dreadful in its hectic prowess to end and start life at a continuum of immortality. Death as a means to an end and birth as start to a beginning are all encompassing characteristics of the eternal cycle of life.

The butterfly is a typical representation of life cycles where the metamorphosis is visible from egg, to caterpillar then pupa to eventually its adult form, a butterfly. This ability to observe and understand life cycle was since long performed by our ancestors. Viewing living from the perspective of life cycle, existence is immortal. Yet, it is certain that living organisms such as trees and humans age and eventually die, but this hasn’t set an end to their presence. They continue to exist. The realm of existence pervasively continues, individuals decease but ‘individuals’ still exist.

Life cycle is related to generation. Going back in time, to the ancient Egyptians the renewal cycle of life was at that time a known cult. At the bank of the largest river, Nile, Egyptians admired the life cycle of the sun; a sun that died in the evening when heading west and was just reborn from east the following morning. This Egyptian mythologist was more than merely scientific observation it was the secret of life itself. They called it the work of God; God Osiris.

Theoretically, immortal renewal is the basic of ancient Egyptian religion. Osiris an Egyptian God or philosopher was blessed with the possibility to evade from death and even corruption while personally entering the realm of immortality.

Any ancient Egyptian philosopher would certainly be amazed if he gazed on science’s position today. The dry and dense sand known as desert would properly never be considered by our ancestors to be convertible to our furniture. This very sand is today transformed into glass and then refined into lenses. Going beyond contemporary uses of lenses, they became used in telescopes and microspores to magnify what was previously unseen to the naked eye. In the 19th century scientists discovered the mechanism of reproduction via cells. This depicted that all existing life came from pre-existing life, ascertaining a continuum. Life of past human had a generation link to future descendent via microscopic cells.

This understanding gave rise to the Cell theory. A well-known German scientist in the field was August Weismann. He explained that life did properly originate from single-celled animals billions years ago, and these single-celled creatures were practically immortal. Weismann implied ‘immortal’ in the sense that they could die but did not necessarily have to die. For instance, the sub-derived cells or cousins cells had this weakness of dying. Moreover, with a proper environment and suitable nutrition the cell division could continue indeterminately whereby there would not necessarily be any dead ancestors.

Thereafter, Weismann proposed that these immortal cells might have gradually merged together with the daughter cells. This did thereby develop a cluster of identical cells. These cells would then afterward be bordered with daughter cells to assure protection and immortality giving them a better proficiency to move around in water.

Why do multi-cellular animals die?

Why do mammals such as cats, dogs and humans die? According to Weismann’s extraordinary suggestion, cells that are in cluster evolve in a radical way. In some time in history, there must have existed animals that were simply a cluster of cells. This ball of cells is named Volvox. Due to gradual or radical change, some of the immortal cells began to specialize in order to make the splitting/ reproduction of sister cells easier. These specialized cells are called ‘Somatic’ cells. However, the somatic cells lost the dexterity to replicate comparable organisms. The cell had come to a point of evolution that it could not be reverted or changed any further. This led to the development of specialized cells.

The benefit of this particular evolution was that the organism becomes much more dynamic but at a cost the somatic cells where no longer immortal. The cells specialization processes practically made somatic cells death a certainty.

There still exist many cells such as amoeba, which can be immortal, but Volvox is destined to die. It is as evident as man must die after reproducing. Once the children exist, the parent’s role is biologically over, and can form part of its ancestors.

The aging process is one of the most complex challenges that science has been tackling over millenniums. Weismann, in 1881 conducts a lecture on this same topic ‘On the Duration of Life’. Hereby, a first classical explanation of how multi-cellular animals age was delivered. All multi-cellular animals according to the cell theory are derivates of unicellular forms of life, yet they do not possess the same features such as immortality.

The multi-cellular organism losing the ability to live forever can be explained through the division of labour. As the ball of similar cells continued to expand, specialized somatic cells lost some of the homogeneity of its original cells. This process became more complex and the cells were gradually separated into two groups. The somatic cell did constantly become abundant, which further led to specialization but at the cost of relinquishing the reproduction mechanism itself. The reproduction mechanism became concentrated in a specialized cell, the reproductive cell. The deprivation of reproduction capabilities of the somatic cell made it vulnerable to death. This can be referred to as ‘wear and tear’ experienced as cells cannot constantly renew themselves or forever undergo the process of cell division.

In these early days Weismann, predicted that germ-line cells of animals had the attribute of immortality, which is a raw fact today.

The Hayflick’s experiment in 1961, confirmed that somatic cells were mortal. Weismann had earlier forecast that this cell was mortal and has reached an optimum growth. Hayflick’s research had already become a doctrine in 1970’s and human was found having cells being both mortal and immortal. Moreover, we human are more aware about the mortal cells that build up our tissues; blood, skin and bones. All the cells that build up our outer-form of our body are mortal and destined to die one day.

Nonetheless, in our body immortal cells are present. A cell called germ-line is a cell that is immortal. Its enduring existence is shown by the fact that once a baby is born, she/he remains young and in the future, that very baby has its possibility to reproduce a baby of its own. This process is an eternal one.

It was only in 1997, that Geron Corporation was able to segregate the gene found in the germ-line cell that had these replication capabilities. A special protein called telomerase was present, and its function was to reverse aging at the tip of the chromosome. Later on, research was conducted to practically ‘rewind’ the biological clock that Hayflick defined for the human body. This process is nowadays called telomerase therapy, and has been well performed for laboratory cells. Unfortunately, the challenge of making it applicable to human cells and gene is yet not an accomplished achievement.

The challenge of transforming somatic cells into immortal cells remains a step that science has yet to surpass.

Reference
Michael D. West, Ph,D. (2004) The scientific conquest of Death, Imminst.org

Anti Aging, Anti Aging Theories, Gerontology, Health And Aging, Immortality, Stem cells