From: CYMM (cymm@trinidad.net)
Date: Wed Jun 28 2000 - 15:02:44 MDT
But Anders,
Just because you can find several instances where fixing up ONE gene can add
another 50% or 100% to maximum lifespan does not mean that INDEFINITE life
extension is easy... on the contrary the finding that fixing any one or two
of a set of many totally different genes can do this... seems to indicate
that a very complex system is at work...
Fixing such systems so that they'll achieve biological immortality seems to
me well nigh impossible. That's why I'll go the cyborg way folks.
cymm
-----Original Message-----
From: Anders Sandberg <asa@nada.kth.se>
To: extropians@extropy.com <extropians@extropy.com>
Date: Wednesday, June 28, 2000 3:42 PM
Subject: Re: Re : Cornering the causes of aging (was Re: AGING: Accumulation
of DNAdamage)
>"CYMM" <cymm@trinidad.net> writes:
>
>> Yes, it's harder to evolutionarily engineer very long lived individuals
>> because such fitness represents a global optimum on the fitness
landscape.
>> Many many fixes have to be made to a highly specialized metazoan cell.
The
>> reboot is more local an optimum.
>
>Not really, single gene changes can extend lifespans of C elegans, D
>melanogaster and mice notably. Just increasing lifespan is simple. But
>they appear to decrease fitness, see Evolution of lifespan in
>C. elegans by David W. Walker, Gawain McColl, Nicole L. Jenkins,
>Jennifer Harris and Gordon J. Lithgow, Nature 405 18 May 2000
>296-297. I think the evidence suggests that at least under natural
>conditions extreme longevity is not a global optimum.
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