Hacker News Reader

Comment by stephengillie | Hacker News Reader

I've been excitedly keeping up on telomere therapy - based on the observation that telomeres (tiny hairs on our DNA) get shorter as we age, and this internal clock causes our cells to shut off and auto-die.

This research has been in a different area of aging - preventing mitochondria damage. This is also an important part of keeping cells operating correctly.

View on HN

Maybe you already know this and in that case a FYI to anyone else.

According to [1] telomere-lengthening treatments may (the author points out that this conclusion may be incorrect since the data measurement may need some changes) only give you an extra 5 years.

So research in other directions is definitely interesting.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9456792

I'd heard speculation of 10 years, and further speculation that it would be a repeatable treatment. Essentially it would be a vaccine that we'd take like a tetanus shot.

Not sure where you have got that description of telomeres, a better analogy would be protective caps on the ends of your chromosomes.

I got it from one news blog or another. What makes you describe them as protective caps? Do they physically encapsulate the chromosome?

They terminate the chromosome, and it seems that at each division they get shorter (I'm not sure at present how much is understood as to the 'how' or 'why' of that effect). When they get too short, cellular division fails.

>> I've been excitedly keeping up on telomere therapy...

Then you should be taking Astragalus. It lengthens them. I'm not convinced the telomeres are key. They're actually still quite long in people 90+ years old.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com