Talk of The Villages Florida - View Single Post - Why do we get old and die?
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Old 07-24-2014, 03:02 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by kittygilchrist View Post
On short look, I do not see a lot of research to back this up. One article said that cancer cells do not get shorter on reproduction due to telomeres while normal cells do get shorter and thus lack infinite quality. Makes no sense...what am I missing?
You are missing info about an important enzyme called teleromase. It controls the production of telomeres on the ends of our DNA. As we age, we produce less and less of this enzyme. Usually, when a cell replicates incorrectly, the error will prevent the cell copying itself again. But with cancer, cells with errors can "turn on" the production of telomerase and make the mutant cell immortal. Now, aberrant cells can reproduce unchecked and outlive normal cells. This is the process that creates tumors. Of course, as we do more and more research our understanding of this may grow or even change. That's the beauty of science. It's always challenging and testing it's own assumptions.
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