Guy Dunphy wrote:
> Anyone know if more recent work has examined the condition of the telomeres
> in Werner syndrome patients?
> Isn't it amazing the number of researchers who are looking into telomeres,
> 'just for the cancer connection'!
> What a bunch of funding whimps. Go on, admit it you guys, WE ALL WANT TO BE
> IMMORTAL.
> Another thought: Given the prime ageing mechanism may be so simple, just a 'bit
> of string' that gets shortened till its all gone,
> Interesting thought. Can anyone think of any fossil record data that would
> allow estimation of real 'age at death' of early human fossils? Not just age
> estimated by comparison of structure to modern humans. Bones don't have age
> rings like trees, do they? And carbon dating gives time from then till now,
> not 'lifetime' age.
This is all very interesting, but you seem to unaware that there is no evidence of a
connection between telomere length/cellular ageing and organismal ageing. Organismal
ageing is better discussed in terms of mortality - no one dies of "old age". There is
always a "pathology", and that has nothing to do with telomere length. Of course, older
people have older cells that may be less good at doing their stuff, contributing to a
conditions that kills. Would you really argue that telomere lenght killed George Burns and
Sergei Gringkov?
Also, the fossil record would look at people with no basic health care or sanitation, that
were predated actively. Hardly a fair comparison. In general, in the wild, animals never
reach their maximum possible age because they get eaten first!
So I guess, most scientists who work on telomeres do so to learn more about tumors, than
for the sake of living forever. Also the connection between cellular ageing and telomere
length is so far only correlative: no direct evidence of causation has been provided.
Oliver Bogler, Ph.D.
Ludwig Inst for Cancer Res., UCSD
