I had a few minutes and wanted to post some additional
information/URLs about this Hayflick limit that might
be of use;
http://www.columbian.com/kids/druniverse/die2.html
....a scientist named Leonard Hayflick discovered that
there is a LIMIT to how many times they can divide.
That number, which is now called the "Hayflick Limit,"
is around 50.
Since Professor Hayflick made this discovery, other
scientists have done the same experiment with cells
from other species. What they've found out is that,
generally, the more times an animal's cells divide,
the longer its lifespan.
Elizabeth Blackburn and Carol Greider discovered how
the ends of chromosomes are repaired in a one-cell
organism called a Tetrahymena.
Now get this.
As far as anyone can tell, the Tetrahymena LIVES
FOREVER.(Unless it's eaten, squashed, starved, or
whatever.)
Of course, the single cell doesn't live forever.
Remember, cells reproduce by dividing. The result of
each division is identical to the parent cell.
Regardless of HOW it lives forever, though, an
immortal cell gets aging scientists pretty excited.
In order for the strands of DNA to separate, they
require a PRIMER, something to get them started. This
primer is another molecule called RNA.
When the RNA primer finishes its job and disappears,
it leaves a GAP in the DNA strand. What this means is
that each time the DNA copies itself so that the cell
can divide, the chromosome gets shorter.
AHA! THIS MUST BE THE AGING CLOCK!
This clock, the end of the chromosome, is called a
"telomere." Telomeres are made up of the same DNA
message pattern repeated over and over and over.
So when a little disappears, it's okay, the message is
still there. But there is a limit to how much can get
clipped off--the Hayflick Limit! AHA! But now, back to
our one-celled friend, the Tetrahymena. When the
Tetrahymenae divide, their chromosomes stay about the
same length. So Professors Blackburn and Greider
figured there must be something that fills in the gaps
at the chromosome ends. Sure enough, they found an
enzyme called "telomerase."
The telomerase sees the shortened DNA strand, gloms
on, and fills it in. It's telomerase that repairs and
maintains the length of its chromosomes and makes the
Tetrahymena immortal!
------------------
http://www.grg.org/resources/extro/tsld061.htm
150 mitotic divisions using recent genetically
engineered divisions
------------------
http://www.healthandage.com/patient/fpubli.htm?content=../publi/0308010132/p2.htm
After a certain number of divisions, they enter a
state of cell senescence, in which they do not divide
or proliferate and DNA synthesis is blocked.
For example, young human fibroblasts --
collagen-producing cells frequently used in this
branch of aging research -- divide about 50 times and
then stop.
This phenomenon has become known as the Hayflick
limit, after Leonard Hayflick, who with Paul Moorhead
first described it while at the Wistar Institute in
Philadelphia.
Intrigued by the possibility that the Hayflick limit
might help explain some aspects of bodily aging,
gerontologists have looked for and found links between
senescence and human life spans.
Fibroblasts taken from 75-year-olds, for example, have
fewer divisions remaining than cells from a child.
Moreover, the longer a species' life span, the higher
its Hayflick limit; human fibroblasts have higher
Hayflick limits than mice fibroblasts.
Every chromosome, they have discovered, has tails at
the ends that get shorter as a cell divides. Named
telomeres, the tails all have the same, short sequence
of DNA bases repeated thousands of times. The
repetitive structure stabilizes the chromosomes,
forming a tight bond between the two strands of the
DNA.
Each time a cell divides, the telomeres shed a number
of bases, so telomere length gives some indication of
how many divisions the cell has already undergone and
how many remain before it becomes senescent.
This apparent counting mechanism, almost like an
abacus keeping track of the cell's age, has led to
speculation that telomeres do serve as molecular
meters of cell division.
But they may play a more active role, and telomere
researchers are exploring the possibility that these
chromosome ends regulate cellular life span in some
way.
---------------------
To my view its how much electrical and heat energy
that is avaible on a cellular level. I always found
it interesting that tissue can literally 'melt', just
like the Wicked Witch of the West in the Land of OZ.
The process is called denaturing where the double
helix zipper, unzips and all the base pair connections
fall apart. This can be accomplished using heat, UV
or other energetic or vibratory processes.
Normally DNA unzips each time it makes a copy but the
base pairs IDEALLY maintain their original pattern and
IDEALLY their copies will be perfect, however outside
influences in the form of UV can cause the hydrogren
bonds that hold the base pairs together to come loose,
thus freeing up the base pairs. They will try to
rejoin but not always in the same pattern and this
results in the mutations of the original pattern that
if duplicated enough, lead to cancer, etc...
I believe the wavelength is 280 nanometers for a DNA
strand which just happens to be the frequency most
perfectly absorbed by water, which just happens to be
a frequency of Ultraviolet and is WHY UV can be so
dangerous to living tissue.
Not a lot you can do to protect yourself from
widescale UV when outside without wearing massive
covering but the idea of optimizing the regenerative
and self correcting abilities of the body offer a
solution.
The logical time for regeneration would be while
sleeping over an hour period, when the body is not
having to multitask to carry out so many other
activities, ranging from moving around, concentration,
doing physical work, eating/processing food -
generally taxing the energy and abilities of the body,
that could be fully applied to healing, repair and
even rejuvenation.
I had always thought that by sleeping in a reduced
gravity zone, whether you be floating in the air or
just to reduce your 'weight' to a few pounds, that the
body would have many gravity related stresses removed
from it and so assist in healing and repair of damaged
tissues.
That is an interesting possibility for the Tampere
stimulated superconductor with the so-called reduced
'gravity' column. To my view I still consider it
diamagnetic repulsion like the 'flying frogs' at;
http://www-hfml.sci.kun.nl/hfml/levitate.html
and I don't know how well the hydrogen bonds of the
DNA/RNA would stand up to that. I would not risk
genetic damage even for a few minutes of flying in
such a field.
I know on the frog website they report no adverse
biological or physical reactions have occurred in the
frogs so levitated, but I don't like the idea of
experiencing it, then 6 months or further down the
road getting cancer or some other genetic defect
induced by scrambled DNA/RNA.
http://www.sci.kun.nl/hfml/froglev.html
In the case of living organisms, NO ADVERSE EFFECTS of
strong static magnetic fields are known – after all,
our frog levitated in fields comparable to those used
in commercial in-vivo imaging systems (currently up to
10T). The small frog looked comfortable inside the
magnet and, afterwards, happily joined its fellow
frogs in a biology department.
------------------
The last date of modification for the above file shows
as 13-APR-1999 so surely if there was some kind of
genetic damage BY NOW, they would have responsibly
reported it. Talk about a new ride at Six Flags!
=====
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Please respond to jdecker@keelynet.com
as I am writing from my work email of
jwdatwork@yahoo.com.........thanks!
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