What does a scientific theory mean? Absent a clear definition, every emfubar, while demonstrably an fubar, will claim science as part of a fubar belief system. Any statement becomes a scientific hypothesis only when it satisfies by negation the falsifiability test of Popper, and positively being a rational skeptic who never ceases a why. Ultimately the infinite regress leads to astronomical evolution which can be continued to about 10-21 second after big bang. What was before that, assumes there was a before, not necessary by any scientific theory. There are many cosmogenies that imply there was a before, but as a basic axiom. One of Cosmogonies in fact says that big bang is when time began. Note that time becomes infinitely slow at the speed of light and that spent by a photon despite coming from eons away is still zero. Neutrinos are matter traveling almost but not nearly light experience time, enough to change flavor in flight unlike photons which have same frequency fixed at creation time.
So what is the theory of Aging? It must be consistent with all known physics, chemistry and biology. It must be provable in the sense that some feature of the theory, on violation speeds up or reduces age. This must be simple enough to be allow performance in peer laboratories without requiring consultation with the author. In other words, experimental evidence can be collected and compared absent the author. This external repeatability is essential to science. I add another test peculiar to me - no external force (like God) may be invoked to explain all life on earth, this is not necessarily a denial of God, just the requirement God concept is not needed. All life can be explained (despite intelligent design pseudo-science) through evolution. This evolution-compatibility is my requirement and holds for Sinclair's theory. It even explains why all life on earth has a DNA basis, why fountain of youth is possible without time travel and why other forms of DNA do not exist. We might never encounter any other DNA.
It is a DNA based theory. The simplest form of consistent Circuits, despite other species based genes, is a fundamental requirement that the protein generated by a repair gene prevents the duplication of the DNA i.e. the cell. This exclusionary behavior is anti-simplistic understand of biology of evolution where replication is assumed to always be reason of existence of any lifeforms. True, but ageing is below a cell which has many species' dependent extra parts to the nucleus DNA molecule which is a giant double helix in all forms. Genes are simply small parts of the giant code. Operations are all done by allowing proteins to form by copying portions of DNA. The two cell level processes are duplicate and apoptosis. Duplication can be prevented internally by shutting of duplication gene while repair is in progress. The cell duplicates by unwind the double helix to 2 one strand parts, each of which forms a double helix by element duplication. The whole process takes time and exclusion circuit prevents duplication while unzip happens. This prevents error in the mother and daughter molecules.
Carefully note that any other DNA molecule, without the exclusion circuit, will fail after each coincidence of an error and replication. Errors happen all the time - x-ray, solar activity, stress, bad food etc. Unless DNA can recover some, the lifetime is milliseconds. Even with amelioration of errors, for animals, lifetime is few days to 300 years - cancers limiting life. EVEN TREES LIVE A FEW THOUSAND YEARS. Errors eventually add up and kill. The problem of ageing is too complicated to be solved by biology alone. But extending biological life can enable time for development of cyborg appendages to complete transfer to silicon life.
The fascinating corollaries to above are
1. The correctness of proof of above theory does not lead to any anti-ageing prescription
2. The systemic environmental interventions are all in the epigenome. underlying the epigenome is pristine DNA, as pristine as birth. Extending age and fountain of youth are the same thing.
HORVATH CLOCK
Distinct, but scientific, is the proof in 2012 by Horvath in California that all DNA genome and epigenome has marker sites whose methylation is strictly increasing and correlates with calendar age. The prediction rules depend on the species but are remarkably stable on mesenchrymal cells. For an individual of a spies, a table can be used to predict bio age TO within about 3 years of the calendar age. A table can be prepared in advance per species to predict bio age accurately.
The strictly increasing methylation pattern has very few marks at birth. Amazingly, cells sunjected to yamanaka factors become totiplurasl by shedding the epigenome and the methylation marks of the underlying pristine DNA. Even the mesenchymal changes are not preserved. The cell can begin li8ge anew. But it is rarely a single cell! All the cells revert in unison, and what you get is a ball of cancer.
Amazement follows subsequent research. Of the four Yamanaka factors OSKC , the C is always cancer-genic. Of the 3 others, the degree of specialization removed depends on frequency and degree of immersion, more meaning more reversion. This has immediate applications.
1. The degree of age removal can be judged by starting and ending bio age. There are for example telomere based methods which predict a longer life from telomere restoration, but in this case too, the methylation removal happens. One can not cheat the Horvath clock,
2. A genetic age reversal process follows by OSK based foods and medicine, subjects of future research.
No comments:
Post a Comment