Re:Resetting the Clock of Life
by jostmey on Sunday August 13, 2017 @06:02PM
(#15005195)
How many people periodically restart their computer just because they think it might run better afterwards? Maybe it was easier for natural selection to periodically restart the clock than to debug all the molecular pathways so that they remain stable over an organism's lifetime.
[ Parent
| on HN ]
> debug all the molecular pathways so that they remain stable over an organism's lifetime.
It did just that. Hence the lifetime being what it is...
You now want to debug the molecular pathways to remain stable longer than the present lifetime, which will merely move that point a bit into the future, and will then be the new lifetime.
Re:Resetting the Clock of Life
by candiodari on Monday August 14, 2017 @10:11AM
(#15008655)
Except the cells used for procreation are also part of the cell line, and do require "debugged molecular pathways" (nature doesn't debug, nature makes things recover from errors, though not always in ways you'd like)
This reason for death does not really make sense. Only the connections between cells get reset. The cell line has to continue, with the potentially problematic molecular pathways (look at all the mitochondrial DNA syndromes).
In fact, if you think about it, there is a continuous cell line between that skinflake you just shed and the very first time DNA started replicating on this planet.