The secret to immortality (in Off-topic)

Fail at posting! lol!

The secret to immortality

so we have to turn into.. worms?

No, but if they can unlock how to keep telomeres from disappearing at the end of chromosomes, or find a way to make chromosomes develop new telemeres, then bam we have unlocked one of the secrets of aging. When those chromosomes break down, they become inactive. The death of chromosomes is associated with aging and death. Here is where I found a lot of that info: http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/begin/traits/telomeres/

so what we have to do is find a way so those telemores (not sure if I wrote it right) to be "immortal" so we can be immortal?

There are a few experimental drugs that will repair 90-95% of the telomer loss. Haven't been approved for use in humans yet though.

Human cancer cells also have a habit of self-repairing their own telomeres, otherwise aggressive cancers would not exist, due to the Hayflick limit (40-60 division to senescence caused by tiny telomeres).
So why is the article not titled "researchers think cancer may hold secret to immortality" ? :P

Or, better still, there's this specific IMMORTAL cell culture called "HeLa cells", derived from cervical cancer cells taken in 1951 from Henrietta Lacks (hence the name HeLa). To quote further:
"These cells proliferate abnormally rapidly, even compared to other cancer cells. Like many other cancer cells, HeLa cells have an active version of telomerase during cell division, which prevents the incremental shortening of telomeres that is implicated in aging and eventual cell death. In this way the cells circumvent the Hayflick Limit, which is the limited number of cell divisions that most normal cells can later undergo before becoming senescent.
[...]
Because of their adaptation to growth in tissue culture plates, HeLa cells are sometimes difficult to control. They have proven to be a persistent laboratory weed that contaminates other cell cultures in the same laboratory, interfering with biological research and forcing researchers to declare many results invalid. The degree of HeLa cell contamination among other cell types is unknown because few researchers test the identity or purity of already-established cell lines. It has been demonstrated that a substantial fraction of in vitro cell lines ﾗ estimates range from 10% to 20% ﾗ are contaminated with HeLa cells."
The noteworthy part is that the estimated total volume of HeLa cells "alive" today would literally FILL TWO SKYSCRAPERS.
So, how about this for an alternate title: "Dead woman's cervix holds key to immortality" >:)

Or, you know, other equally sensationalist and equally pointless titles.

not quite immortality but a story i heard about a few years ago

this is an update
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/10/science/10aging.html

*for those that can be arsed to read the whole link basically it suggests eating less calories than needed so your body switches to trying to preserve you rather then focusing on making you more reproductive ... yep down side is no/low sex drive to live longer - according to the update it still looks promising but its still to early to be conclusive as the monkeys usually live for 30 - 40 years

Wasn't there an X-Files episode with a human/flatworm hybrid?

So if the scientists researching *this* method, and not cancer cells, actually make it work, would the title still be sensationalist and pointless?

Then it would only be sensationalistic, in retrospect.
Prediction-wise, it's not very likely the study of telomere reconstruction in flatworms will first lead to a human-applicable and human-life-safe method of telomere restoration as opposed to any of the many other possible alternatives, so chances are quite high it is pointless.

And quite frankly, it's not even so much an issue of kickstarting the telomere length restoration process as it is an issue of preventing runaway cancer events in patients that would get the treatment.
Longer youth plus cancer followed by early death doesn't sound as awesome as a long and healthy but relatively "normal-spanned" old man life, or does it ?
Cloning an entire replacement body (or at least a myriad body parts) sounds much better to me. Add a cure for neuro-degenerative diseases plus brain+spine transplant methods and you have a winner !

Fluke worm. I still have the action figure around here somewhere.