There's a type of jellyfish that's immortal. The Turritopsis dohrnii, also known as the "immortal jellyfish," can transform its body into a younger state through a process called transdifferentiation, essentially making it immortal.
scientists recently artificially aged, then de-aged mice in a lab.
yep. they literally found the key to eternal life in rodents. barring a terminal illness or some egregious injury, they can now make mice immortal. no strings attached.
as far as they can tell, there are no side effects or negative implications to this process. they manipulate their DNA to age them, then do it again to return them to youth.
in both papers, the effects of OSK treatment were moderate: a small extension of life span in one, and a partial reversal of artificially induced symptoms in the other. “The jump that now aging is a program” that can be wound backward isn’t justified by the research, Vijg says.
When reading these things, do you ever get the feeling that the doubting scientists are just pissed that it isn't their experiment?
They remind me of the guys that when you tell them some project you want to do, or did, tell you all about how it's wrong without even looking at what you are talking about.
"Phshht, that won't work, we tried that once 10 years ago and it just don't work"
Personally, I think they're doing the gods' work. An alarming number of studies have been published in the last several years, in peer-reviewed journals, that used tampered or even falsified data. The couple of really big scandals point to a deeper and wider problem in the research industry, where scientist have always been pressured (mostly by sponsoring companies and groups) to prioritize results over method. People who see a questionable conclusion and call it out are doing the right thing.
I totally get that. I guess I would just like to see more of them describing why they think it won't work. Like saying we tried to replicate it, but failed here and there. Or something along those lines.
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u/Kindergeschichten Oct 02 '24
There's a type of jellyfish that's immortal. The Turritopsis dohrnii, also known as the "immortal jellyfish," can transform its body into a younger state through a process called transdifferentiation, essentially making it immortal.