MOLECULAR AND CELULLAR MEDICINE ADVANCES = ETERNAL YOUTH?

4.- Another gene involved in the aging process is that of Telomerase, an enzyme, whose function is to maintain the stability of chromosomes by keeping constant the length of its ends, the telomeres, in dividing cells, such as the embryo and 98% of the different types of cancer. It is inactive in adult tissue, that is the reason, as I told you in my article on cloning, why telomeres get shorter with age.

Some telomerase scientists consider the telomeres as biological clocks, so they thought that keeping telomerase active cells would become immortal. They were able to demonstrate this inserting the telomerase gene in tissue culture cells lacking it and the cells were immortalized, that is, they are now able to divide for ever, or if you want, they do not grow old. Of course the important trick would be to keep the cells young, that is, telomerase active in each of the nucleated cells of the human body, without transforming them in cancerous tissue, because as it is know, cell immortality means the death of a human being.

One sad note is that it seems that our telomeres are long enough to get us, in average, to the seventies and nineties, and that is the reason that average life span of humans is 76 years. In other words when the telomeres cannot longer be enlarged by telomerase, chromosomes start to fall apart ensuing a series of all kind of molecular disasters that ends with death. If you feel like it, you can go to the death clock a funny site which allows you to calculate the date and hour of your death depending on your mood.

The evidence that I have discussed up to now tells us that there is more than one gene involved in aging. Some people think than there are more than 7,000 genes regulating this process. It takes about 100,000 genes to make a human being, and everything starts to fall apart in everybody around 60 years to think that almost 10% of them are dedicated to this particular task, a more acceptable figure comes from:

4.- Very recent experiments done with the microchips that I mentioned in my second article. With this technology they can see genes at work that is, which genes are being