I notice that Sea Breeze said the following on page two of this topic thread. "The problem is that modern thinking is infected with Naturalistic Materialism." In actuality Naturalistic Materialism is NOT an infection. The belief in supernaturalism is an infection (an insidious one) of the mind of most humans and that infectious disease has existed throughout recorded history and probably started thousands of years prior. It has been spread from one human mind to another (it is a meme). Paul was heavily infected with the thinking when he spoke of having a battle with the forces of darkness. [Paul died for his false beliefs pertaining to Christ and his idea of the resurrection.] In contrast, I have a battle against teachings of supernaturalism.
Scientists (including David Sinclair, who I mentioned in the Naturalism topic I created) using the mindset of Materialism and Naturalism are now reversing biological ageing! Think of how much could have been accomplished 1000 years ago if humanity had abandoned belief in supernatutalism over 1000 years ago and fully embraced science, naturalism, and scientific materialism! over 1000 years ago! See https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/12/health/reversing-aging-scn-wellness/index.html and https://time.com/6246864/reverse-aging-scientists-discover-milestone/ . Much like one of the WT's Bible (Job 33:25) based teachings (but without the supernaturalism) of flesh returning to youthfulness scientists are now restoring flesh back to youthfulness - but without supernatural means! Lab animals that were made prematurely biologically old have been made biologically young again - by means of Naturalistic Materialism!
Sea Breeze, David Sinclair (a molecular biologist) uses the terminology of information theory in regards to the human genome and epigenome. That is something you can relate to for you also use that terminology. The CNN article article says in part the following.
'The combined experiments, published for the first time Thursday in the journal Cell, challenge the scientific belief aging is the result of genetic mutations that undermine our DNA, creating a junkyard of damaged cellular tissue that can lead to deterioration, disease and death.
“It’s not junk, it’s not damage that causes us to get old,” said Sinclair, who described the work last year at Life Itself, a health and wellness event presented in partnership with CNN.
“We believe it’s a loss of information — a loss in the cell’s ability to read its original DNA so it forgets how to function — in much the same way an old computer may develop corrupted software. I call it the information theory of aging.”
Jae-Hyun Yang, a genetics research fellow in the Sinclair Lab who coauthored the paper, said he expects the findings “will transform the way we view the process of aging and the way we approach the treatment of diseases associated with aging.”
... “The astonishing finding is that there’s a backup copy of the software in the body that you can reset,” Sinclair said. “We’re showing why that software gets corrupted and how we can reboot the system by tapping into a reset switch that restores the cell’s ability to read the genome correctly again, as if it was young.”
It doesn’t matter if the body is 50 or 75, healthy or wracked with disease, Sinclair said. Once that process has been triggered, “the body will then remember how to regenerate and will be young again, even if you’re already old and have an illness. Now, what that software is, we don’t know yet. At this point, we just know that we can flip the switch.” '
The Time magazine article says in part the following.
'In the Cell paper, Sinclair and his team report that not only can they age mice on an accelerated timeline, but they can also reverse the effects of that aging and restore some of the biological signs of youthfulness to the animals. That reversibility makes a strong case for the fact that the main drivers of aging aren’t mutations to the DNA, but miscues in the epigenetic instructions that somehow go awry. Sinclair has long proposed that aging is the result of losing critical instructions that cells need to continue functioning, in what he calls the Information Theory of Aging. “Underlying aging is information that is lost in cells, not just the accumulation of damage,” he says. “That’s a paradigm shift in how to think about aging. “
His latest results seem to support that theory. It’s similar to the way software programs operate off hardware, but sometimes become corrupt and need a reboot, says Sinclair. “If the cause of aging was because a cell became full of mutations, then age reversal would not be possible,” he says. “But by showing that we can reverse the aging process, that shows that the system is intact, that there is a backup copy and the software needs to be rebooted.”
In the mice, he and his team developed a way to reboot cells to restart the backup copy of epigenetic instructions, essentially erasing the corrupted signals that put the cells on the path toward aging. They mimicked the effects of aging on the epigenome by introducing breaks in the DNA of young mice. (Outside of the lab, epigenetic changes can be driven by a number of things, including smoking, exposure to pollution and chemicals.) Once “aged” in this way, within a matter of weeks Sinclair saw that the mice began to show signs of older age—including grey fur, lower body weight despite unaltered diet, reduced activity, and increased frailty.
The rebooting came in the form of a gene therapy involving three genes that instruct cells to reprogram themselves—in the case of the mice, the instructions guided the cells to restart the epigenetic changes that defined their identity as, for example, kidney and skin cells, two cell types that are prone to the effects of aging. These genes came from the suite of so-called Yamanaka stem cells factors—a set of four genes that Nobel scientist Shinya Yamanaka in 2006 discovered can turn back the clock on adult cells to their embryonic, stem cell state so they can start their development, or differentiation process, all over again. Sinclair didn’t want to completely erase the cells’ epigenetic history, just reboot it enough to reset the epigenetic instructions. Using three of the four factors turned back the clock about 57%, enough to make the mice youthful again.
“We’re not making stem cells, but turning back the clock so they can regain their identity,” says Sinclair. “I’ve been really surprised by how universally it works. We haven’t found a cell type yet that we can’t age forward and backward.”
Rejuvenating cells
in mice is one thing, but will the process work in humans? That’s
Sinclair’s next step, and his team is already testing the system in
non-human primates. The researchers are attaching a biological switch
that would allow them to turn the clock on and off by tying the
activation of the reprogramming genes to an antibiotic, doxycycline.
Giving the animals doxycycline would start reversing the clock, and
stopping the drug would halt the process. Sinclair is currently
lab-testing the system with human neurons, skin, and fibroblast cells,
which contribute to connective tissue.'
I encourage people to read both articles in their entirety.
See also https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/31/europe/immortal-jellyfish-study-spain-scn-intl-hnk/index.html .
