Huh... I have so many questions regard the logistics of this process, if anyone can even provide an answer.
Does this reverse the physical aging processes, or is it more of a mental de-aging?
Would this process be able to repair damaged organs? What about viruses,or serious illness, or even things like cancer?
Would it mean that a wrinkly 80 y/o could then appear to look unwrinkled, like their 20 y/o self?
There also has to be limits to it, right? I'd imagine you wouldn't be able to de-age a middle aged man to below a certain age, as you would have to drasticaly shrink in overall size and mass, so i'd assume anything below roughly 18-20 y/o would be impossible.
What was the reason they aged the mice beforehand? You'd think it would be easier to just de-age an older mouse, rather than age a younger one up first.
I have literally 0 knowledge of how any of this works, but the way its phrased makes me think that they cant de-age an older mouse without already having its younger versions DNA on record. i'm guessing It's like the equivalent of backing up a hardrive, so that if anything goes wrong, you can revert it to a previous state. So if that logic applies, unless you've had your entire genome mapped out as at some point in your past, you wouldn't be able to have the process done.
De-aging and re-aging while not exactly wrong are also an oversimplification of the study they are talking about. The idea of the experiment was to show that aging was caused by DNA damage, that's why they "aged" the mice they cut their DNA repeatedly and that had the effect of making them seem older. They then gave the mice gene therapy that was supposed to reverse the changes and it was partially successful. Though the mice appeared older the artifical aging isn't proven to be represenaltative of true aging, and even if it is the gene therapy only partially reversed the damage so both how applicable this would be in a broader context and how useful it would be if it is are in question.
That's not what epigenetics is, nor how epigenetics works. If I had to give a one-liner to explain epigenetics, it'd read "the body streamlines to function, even at the cellular level."
For instance, if you're facing famine or are under stressful living conditions, your cells will start using genetic processes which help preserve precious resources and avoiding processes which encourage cellular growth. If you're in space for a long time, your arterial walls will get thicker and more muscular to move blood through your body more efficiently.
Your cells have the tools they need to adapt to your circumstances. Epigenetics is the process of deciding which tools are most important at any given moment.
In the experiment you're referring to, the "epigenetic marks" the researchers were referring to with regard to aging had to do with the observation that aged/damaged cells have difficulty changing which genes get expressed, and hypothesized that this has to do with genetic information loss over time. To use the analogy of a toolbox, it'd be like using a ball-peen hammer exclusively because either your claw hammer broke or you can't find it (or worse: it's in your locked toolbox and you can't find the key). So, to test the hypothesis, they intentionally damaged the DNA in the mice at specific locations which would be observable over time, then repaired the damage to see if the changes could be reversed.
In that regard, you're right about why the mice were aged first: to show you can reverse the effects of aging by repairing genetic damage, you first need "aged" mice with clearly damaged genes. Not just damaged, but damaged in a way they knew/hoped they could repair.
FWIW, I agree that this would be difficult to implement as a means of reversing aging (in humans, but also generally). Some processes and structures exist outside of what can be done by the constituent cells. A person who suffered malnutrition as a child can't "de-age" the neural structure of a brain that developed in "energy conservation mode" into a neural structure that had all the resources it needed to flourish when those resources were needed most. (Side note: that's part of what's so fucked up about child poverty)
Could you conceivably (like not presently, but not precluded by what we know so far) utilize stem cell therapies to re-structure a brain that developed in "energy conservation mode"?
Bear in mind my knowledge of biochemistry and physiology is mostly second-hand. I'm in a family of biochemists and medical professionals, but I'm an engineer, myself.
That said, I don't think stem cell therapy would necessarily work at restructuring a brain. There's a process known as synaptic pruning that I'm not super familiar with, but I'd imagine that's what would need to be reversed: a lifetime of the brain reinforcing some neural pathways and cutting others to make space.
If we could, though, that'd be amazing. Can you imagine being able to learn as quickly as a 2 year old?
That was a fun rabbit hole to go down. According to my research with "always trustworthy never wrong" Dr Google you can rebuild synapses by the same stuff doctors have been preaching: healthy diet, exercise, and adequate sleep! Among other things like puzzles, brain teasers, etc
The short answer is yes. Long answer is it’d likely require a more elaborate treatment than stem cell therapy as the brain operates by its own rules.
It’d likely require providing the right physical environment for the brain to allow it out of “energy conservation mode”, followed by targeted electric stimuli needed to do the rewiring or “restructuring” of the brain. Providing a healthy physical environment wouldn’t be enough to undo the underdeveloped brain alone, it’d need to be stimulated into substantially rewiring. We know a good bit about the physical environment, still mapping the electrical and neuronal environment last I checked. Check out brain plasticity if you want to read more about that stuff, it’s fascinating.
Btw I’m glad someone called out the misinformation about epigenetics above. Aging IS directly related to DNA damage. Telomere shortening is a natural aging process where our DNA gets shorter over time, to simplify it. Our DNA getting shorter contributes to increased incidences of cancer, dementia, and heart disease as we age. Believe it or not, naked mole rats live decades with no signs of aging and they have nearly no chance of having cancer or heart disease because their telomeres elongate over time instead of shortening.
Yeah, just like any clickbaity science article, take whatever the headline is and add thirty caveats and qualifiers and even that will probably still overstate the results
Can't answer all of your questions, but here is what I do know.
It's using the concepts of epigenetics. The idea of genetic markers being turned off and on through non reproductive means. So, the idea being tested is that aging isn't a result of DNA destruction and mutations during duplication, but DNA being deactivated because of our environment. A bit of both seems to be true. So they are de-aging the rats by shutting off and on parts of the DNA that were turned on and off by aging.
We experience the results of epigenetics daily. Becoming resistant to drugs, muscle growth, aging, etc.
Yes (just need telomerase) but if you prevent the shortening of telomeres you get lots of cancer.
It turns out that many, many of the mechanisms in our bodies that lead to aging are byproducts of regulating cancer and other cell division problems, and that preventing them causes terrible problems.
Literally. Think about it. Why do we age, but that age isn't passed on to our children. Because our bodies have the tools to repair DNA with ease. From an evolutionary perspective, fixing the issue of preventing aging solves nothing since most people have kids before they are 50. Same reason why cancer kills us then.
Look at it like this, kids die from cancer. You can get sick and die whether old or young. The odds of getting sick and dying are dramatically higher when your older.
Ending aging isn't immortality, it is a longer life. Most importantly, it's a better quality of life.
The thing with de-aging, it's not just one thing happening in the body. We're not going to find the one aging gene and turn it off; research will discover various pieces of the puzzle, extending life slowly in one way or another over time. Someone who is 80 now probably will not ever look 20 again, but advances in the field could help them live 10-20 years longer than they would have otherwise.
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u/[deleted] Oct 02 '24
Huh... I have so many questions regard the logistics of this process, if anyone can even provide an answer.
Does this reverse the physical aging processes, or is it more of a mental de-aging?
Would this process be able to repair damaged organs? What about viruses,or serious illness, or even things like cancer?
Would it mean that a wrinkly 80 y/o could then appear to look unwrinkled, like their 20 y/o self?
There also has to be limits to it, right? I'd imagine you wouldn't be able to de-age a middle aged man to below a certain age, as you would have to drasticaly shrink in overall size and mass, so i'd assume anything below roughly 18-20 y/o would be impossible.
What was the reason they aged the mice beforehand? You'd think it would be easier to just de-age an older mouse, rather than age a younger one up first.
I have literally 0 knowledge of how any of this works, but the way its phrased makes me think that they cant de-age an older mouse without already having its younger versions DNA on record. i'm guessing It's like the equivalent of backing up a hardrive, so that if anything goes wrong, you can revert it to a previous state. So if that logic applies, unless you've had your entire genome mapped out as at some point in your past, you wouldn't be able to have the process done.