From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Tue Sep 03 2002 - 05:29:39 MDT
On Tue, 3 Sep 2002, Eugen Leitl wrote:
> Nothing is absolutely preventable in praxis. The point is rather, how good
> is your scavengers, your damage recognition and repair? Right now, you
> could probably buy a two decade longer lease on life with built-in
> equipment. That's your current limit. The other issues are: is cryonics
> going to work? When will we be able to make in-vivo nanorepairs?
Non-Homologous End Joining repair of DNA double strand breaks is
definitely error prone. The exonuclease activity of several of
your DNA repair proteins chew up your code (stern robert stares
at exonuclease saying "Bad enzyme!"). IMO thats problem #1.
But *if* one were to extract circulating stem cells, genotype them
for those remaining most "perfect" (should be doable within this
decade), amplify them, then return them to the body, I would
be willing to provide very good odds you just might be able to
push the 1-2 decades to 3-5 decades. You may be able to
attribute Jean Marie Calmet's longevity to simply very robust
levels of stem cells with low levels of DNA damage.
The real question is when can we get chromallocytes (nanorobots
capable of chromosome replacement therapy)? With those and
perhaps ATP-producing-cytes and lipofuscin-destructor-cytes you
are really going to be able to push the envelope. You don't need
something as complex as a vasculoid system (which is a dozen or
more nanorobot types). If we get just those by 2030-2050 then
many of us will not need cryonics.
There are 3 key things and another potentially useful thing we need
for people to really wake up about the potential nanotech to extend life:
a) retrosynthesis and assembly of the fine motion controller;
b) demonstration of *simple* diamondoid assembly with an AFM
(Ralph and Robert have a paper going one step in this
direction at this fall's Foresight conference)
c) demonstration of bacterial whole genome synthesis
(since this would enable robust genome patches for
example on aforementioned stem cells).
d) development of robust computer aided enzyme design
These are all independent paths. Once we have a & b
the hard-dry nanotech path gets very real. Alternately,
c & d would show significant progress on the soft-wet path.
Right now its hard to see the inclusion of nanotechnology
in the lifespan extension development vector. But once
you can, then getting companies off the ground to design
things like chromallocytes will begin to become feasible.
Robert
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