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Showing posts from October 12, 2014

Why are we born . . . . . . Young ??

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An intriguing question that was recently asked by one of the scientists at my departmental retreat. Although simply stated I believe this is a rather important question that would be asked by several biologists . If you look deeply into the question it has two aspects to it.  The first one is the basic question of being born at all. Why does life have to propagate and why at all do species give rise to progeny. A simple answer would be that genetic information needs to be propagated and maintained and there is natural adaptation in response the changing environment which could lead to the "survival of the fittest". With increasing age and individual accumulates several harmful signals such as mutations, Telomere shortening, accumulation of Reactive Oxygen Species etc, just to mention a few of these defects, .that eventually lead to aberrant cellular programming and eventually death . But what if we could find ways to counteract these phenomenon? What id nature evolved to