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Re:Brooke the Immortal: An American Child May Hold Secrets t... by seanalltogether on Monday November 01, 2010 @07:48PM (#1858701)
From the article

"Her teeth, including her baby teeth, are like those of an eight-year-old. The length of the telomeres, on the other hand, corresponds to her actual age."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayflick_limit

"The Hayflick limit was discovered by Leonard Hayflick in 1961,[1] at the Wistar Institute (Philadelphia), when Hayflick demonstrated that a population of normal human fetal cells in a cell culture divide between 40 and 60 times. It then enters a senescence phase (refuting the contention by Alexis Carrel that normal cells are immortal). Each mitosis shortens the telomeres on the DNA of the cell. Telomere shortening in humans eventually blocks cell division and correlates with aging. This mechanism appears to prevent genomic instability and the development of cancer."

So basically she's gonna die from cancer after the average number of years.

Re:Brooke the Immortal: An American Child May Hold Secrets t... by extension on Monday November 01, 2010 @09:03PM (#1858896)
Telomeres prevent cancer by limiting cell division and Brooke's are normal. Other aspects of aging cause cancer but she is supposedly immune to those.

But if her telomeres are shortening, doesn't that mean her aging will eventually catch up to normal because her cells stop regenerating?

Re:Brooke the Immortal: An American Child May Hold Secrets t... by rbanffy on Monday November 01, 2010 @10:43PM (#1859075)
> But if her telomeres are shortening

It means she is aging. She is not developing.

Re:Brooke the Immortal: An American Child May Hold Secrets t... by mortenjorck on Tuesday November 02, 2010 @12:06AM (#1859242)
In a nutshell, yes. While the ordering of her cells is not changing with age, their internal chromosomal structure is.