Fighting+Aging

Fighting Aging:
In the focus that the scientific community has on telomeres, a side avenue that has arisen is that of telomeres and their ability to fight off the signs of aging, and perhaps even make cells immortal. Immortal cells are basically cells that produce telomerase constantly, which results in them stopping aging and leading to their immortality. The only current immortal cell are cancerous cells. Recent studies have found that upon insertion of the telomerase enzyme into a somatic cell in laboratory conditions, the activation of the enzyme should actually keep all the telomeres longer, and it actually reduces the chances of the mutated cell becoming cancerous. However most of this information is hypothetical, as there are no suitable test subjects with a telomere aging system even close to our own, making it very hard to determine whether these results could be applied to humans as well. Ongoing research is being continually conducted into this area of telomere science.

By Joshua Campe

References:
Kendrick, M. (2009) 'Anti-Aging Pill Targets Telomeres at the Ends of Chromosomes' [Online]. __Scientific American__. [] [Accessed 9 November 2011]

Parker, R. (2002) ‘New Telomere Lengthening Technique Developed’ [Online]. __Future Pundit__. Available: [] [Accessed 5 November 2011].