[extropy-chat] AGING: real progress

[Robert J. Bradbury]

Joao (Hi!), I have no problem with your comments regarding the
involvement of SIRT1/sir2 in higher organisms (because I know of
no evidence for such involvement as you point out).

But I would offer the idea that it is very very difficult for
Nature/evolution to change course.  So *if* the apoptosis/stress
response pathways were linked to each other very early on in
evolution I would propose that it would be difficult for them
to become separated.  Not impossible mind you -- which is why
I'm slowly pushing behind the scenes to get a number of long-lived
genomes sequenced -- so we can have the data to figure this out.
What I strongly suspect is that there are "patches" on the apoptosis
program that may decouple it from the stress response program.

With respect to the cancer incidences -- one has to have an organism
that can actually get cancer.  Yeast clearly can't and probably
C. elegans and Drosophila as well.  Cancer is a direct result
of a failure of the program of the regulatory processes of cell
replication in organisms that have enough cells for this to be important.
This probably involves a delicate balance -- in organisms with enough
cells you want to kill off those that are replicating out of control.
In that case you want to replace those cells so there is presumably
a pool of cells biased towards replication (when necessary).  In
my opinion, it doesn't take too much for that situation to get out
of control (which is why cancer causes ~30% of deaths).  (IMO)

But good comments.  If you would care to expand on the p66 involvement
I'd be interested in reading them on/off list.  (I know what it is
but don't have current knowledge with respect to where it fits into
the big picture.)

I would guess the short summary of my previous message is that they
now have a strong candidate for the regulation of at least the stress
response -- it isn't going to take that long to confirm that or blow
it out of the water (even for higher mammals).  That is why I called
it "real progress".  Ultimately, it may not prove to be progress from
a biochemical standpoint -- but it is going to open the door somewhat
wider towards nailing these pathways down.

Robert