Re: What causes aging?

[Jerry Zhu <***>]

Hi Judith,

Enjoy your post. Thanks!

I bought a book by MIT prof. about cancer. A two hour
quick skim leads me totally disagree. I will get into
that book in detail later time.

Aging process is very important phenomenon to
understand life. I doubt that science can privide the
answer. I believe it belongs to the realm of
philosophy. (I need to define science and phiolosphy
here to support my arguments but I am lazy to do that
here) How long cancer reserach has been done? any
reasonable achievements?  Science and philosophy are
not related in scientific way as we see today. Some
scientists carry their research with philosophyical
sense unconsciously. But I doubt this will address
major issues like aging and cancer.

the disappearance of "webing" tissue between fingers
probably not killed themselves.  It maybe that they
split in the middle to attach to both sides in the
process of cell differentiation under the impact of
substrates.  I also think that aging is self caused. 
External cause maybe different chemical processes from
aging's eventhough they may demontrate similar
symptons.

Later soon

Jerry Zhu

--- Judith Rosen <***> wrote:

> 
> From Jerry Zhu's post: Scientists shed new light on
> aging process - 
> Yahoo! News
>
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050630/hl_nm/hongkong_ageing_dc_4
> An Excerpt...
> In 2003, a team of scientists in the United States
> found that progeria 
> was caused by mutation in a protein called Lamin A,
> which lines the 
> nucleus in human cells.
> A team at the University of Hong Kong, led by Zhou
> Zhongjun, took the 
> research a step further in 2004 and found that
> mutated Lamin A 
> actually disrupted the repair process in cells, thus
> resulting in 
> accelerated aging.
> The study was published in the July issue of the
> Nature Medicine 
> journal.
> Zhou said the team came by their findings after
> comparing skin cells 
> taken from two progeria sufferers, normal humans,
> progeria mice and 
> normal mice.
> While damaged DNA was quickly repaired in the
> healthy human and mice 
> cell samples, the samples taken from the progeria
> humans and mice had 
> difficulty repairing damaged DNA.
> "Mutation in this protein (Lamin A) can cause
> defects in repair and 
> thus lead to progeria," Zhou, a research assistant
> professor with the 
> biochemistry department at the University of Hong
> Kong, said in an 
> interview.
> "DNA damage is not effectively repaired in cells
> with defective Lamin 
> A but very efficiently repaired in normal cells."
> The study highlights the importance of Lamin A to
> the repair process, 
> and any mutation to Lamin A that disrupts repair
> will bring about 
> aging, Zhou said.
> 
> Jerry,
> 
> Thanks for posting the link to that article. Aging
> (senescence) was 
> one of Robert Rosen's areas of interest, after he
> was asked to 
> participate in a special research commission during
> the Carter 
> presidency (I have a picture of him with Roslynn
> Carter).  I find this 
> study very interesting. But, like you, I don't think
> they have 
> "discovered" what causes aging. Instead, I think
> they have discovered 
> one of the peculiarities in a disease process that
> mimics aging. Once 
> again, the entailments are what need to be looked
> into, not merely the 
> symptoms. They apparently think similar symptoms
> (normal aging vs. 
> progeria) are automatically due to similar
> underlying causes. But 
> that's like saying that cocaine actually IS
> happiness.
> 
> In order to say that the mutation of the gene which
> creates "Lamin A" 
> is involved in normal aging, I would want to see
> what sorts of 
> environmental factors can impact the gene and cause
> it to mutate. I 
> find it hard to believe that the gene will
> spontaneously mutate in 
> exactly that way, in all body cells, over time...
> and is somehow 
> induced to mutate early in progeria sufferers.
> 
> On the other hand, this study does demonstrate that
> the inter-cellular 
> immune system (part of the organism repair function)
> can be extremely 
> important to overall health. Most people, when the
> immune system is 
> mentioned, think of the general, bodily system, not
> the inter-cellular 
> component.
> 
> I've been fascinated by this aspect of immune system
> function ever 
> since high school, when we learned about
> mitochondrial DNA. It's only 
> been recently that I've been able to find much on
> the internet in the 
> way of new studies into how the mitochondria are
> able to co-exist with 
> the inter-cellular immune system, when they are
> basically a foreign 
> protein. We have to logically assume that the body's
> "self" proteins 
> are nuclear proteins, because there are large
> numbers of mitochondria 
> in most body cells and they are not always the same,
> genetically. Many 
> baffling afflictions may be attributable to
> auto-immune attack on 
> mitochondria; I've seen both fibromyalgia and
> chronic fatigue syndrome 
> mentioned in connection with this. I wonder if other
> auto-immune 
> syndromes may also be triggered by the mitochondria
> being "outed" to 
> the extra-cellular component of the immune system,
> somehow.
> 
> There's also the phenomenon of "programmed cell
> death" which is a 
> normal, necessary feature of many aspects of living
> physiology. For 
> example, in a developing embryo the hands develop
> from a flipper-like 
> appendage, with the fingers initially all attached
> to each other with 
> "webbing" in between. The tissue then dies and is
> resorbed in the 
> appropriate areas to create separate, articulating
> fingers. 
> (Occasionally babies are born with this tissue still
> present and it 
> freaks people out.) Women experience programmed cell
> death of the 
> lining of the uterus every month, if pregnancy
> doesn't occur. This is 
> what causes menstruation. (Such a joy!) My father
> speculated that 
> programmed cell death may be involved in aging, in
> some aspect. He 
> thought we should study the phenomenon to learn what
> triggers it and 
> how it is carried out. Now THAT would be a useful
> cancer tumor 
> treatment!
> 
> Well, it's getting late. When the brain gets tired,
> the brainwaves 
> begin to ramble....
> 
> Judith
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: Jerry Zhu
> To: ***
> Sent: Saturday, July 02, 2005 11:56 AM
> Subject: [ROSEN] Material reductionists
> 
> 
> Today's biologists are material reductionists.
> Everything in life is reducible to substance i.e. 
> the
> ability of cell's self repare that controls aging
> process is reducible to segment of protein.
> 
> The idea of cell self repare is not a primitive term
> and cannot be used as basic statements to derive
> conclusions.
> 
> 
> 



                
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