In <hazelNOSPAM-ya02408000R1808980742020001 at news.springnet1.com>
hazelNOSPAM at springnet1.com (hazel) writes:
>Eh? i dont follow. but i have a question: you said babies dont age
>prematurely, which obvioulsy is true for the most part. what about
those
>genetic defects (damn forgot the name) in which the person ages at an
>accelerated rate so that they look like they are 70 when they are 7.
This isn't accelerated aging--- it just looks like it because
collagen synthesis is screwed up. Kids with progeria (or
Hutchinson-Gilford syndrome) don't get more cancer or Alzheimer's, for
instance. Other candidates for "premature aging" syndromes all have
areas in which they fall short of being pefect aging models.
or
>is this missing the point? im not sure because i didnt quite follow
you. also, whose ova is a million years old? now that i really dont
understand. >how can a person's eggs be older than they are?
>>hazel
Your ova are make from two cells which are obviously older than you
are-- one comes from your father, and one from your mother. You can
argue that the cell from your father has been rigorously selected out,
so that only a perfect copy gets to do the job. But the mechanism for
that with ova is much less obvious, if this happens. So far as we
knows, follicles mature randomly, and the one that opens first is the
one that gets the chance. It may be that some subtle selection is
going on beforehand, I admit. You do, after all, start out with 10 or
100 million oocytes, and a thus a lot more disappear each month than
are released.
Steve Harris
