3 replies to this topic

[treonsverdery]

Carlos Duarte of the University of Western Australia in Perth sequenced the DNA of Posidonia oceanica at 40 sites spanning 3500 kilometres of seafloor, from Spain to Cyprus. One patch off the island of Formentera was identical over 15 kilometres of coastline.
Like all seagrasses, Posidonia oceanica reproduces by cloning, so meadows spanning many kilometres are genetically identical and considered one organism.


Given the plant's annual growth rate the team calculated that the Formentera meadow must be between 80,000 and 200,000 years old, making it the oldest living organism on Earth. It trumps a Tasmanian seagrass, Lomatia tasmanica, believed to be 43,600 years old.

from an immortalist perspective, partial area recloning of a human within the source human would provide somatic identicalness with some similarities to an area cloning (tissue renewal) like this plant. This plant has DNA as well as mitochondria yet has lived 80,000 to 200k years


Now if it were a thinking plant, we could ask it things, or show it the internet. Thus genetically engineering plants to make human neurons might well be a rapid path to creating an immortal thinker.

[nowayout]

Well, it's like saying the bacteria under your fingernail are millions of years old, given that they also reproduce by cloning.

Many other plants also reproduce vegetatively. What makes this different?

Edited by viveutvivas, 07 February 2012 - 12:10 AM.

[Danail Bulgaria]

Well, about the plants, that reproduce vegetatively arises the following question:
If we have 1. a plant, that arose from a part of another plant, and 2. the other plant is genetically identical to the first plant, then what should be the second plant - a new organism, or a part of the previos organism?
And when the first plant dies arises the question what actually is death? The first plant, or the first part of the very same plant.
Recently there are very active discussions among the biologists over these topics, and my oppinion is that so far the answer of this question is fuzzy.

[treonsverdery]

well, if the plant gradually regrew "at place" then it would seem to the observer like one plant, continuing. Also the way that common resources like root water are transported as well as shared among rooted superlongevity plants like the Kings Holly (over 40K years) suggests a shared chemical environment which differs from clonal bacteria.

The idea of a thing that persists even as the parts rotate out is sometimes called an eigenvalue. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCx1Lj2XYBg&feature=related
Eigenvalues have a number of well described mathematical characteristics thus the human awareness of immortality with changing form actually has a premade descriptive language eigenvalue math. eigenvalue math combined with geometry can give very engineeringesque replies like "a sphere can auto renew seamlessly" "a sphere with two apertures only renews seamlessly if the renewal direction is uniform" "a sphere with three apetures can be autorenewing if the renewal direction is constant yet treats each apeture area at a turn, which importantizes the apertures, a kind of emergent effect" Humans just do not know the eigenvalue minimal mathematical description that permits continued consciousness.

anyway, what I am wondering about these superlongevity plants is how the ubiquinate their proteins, ubiquinanation is when cytoproteins get labelled for replacement, thus are the superlongevity plants tidier, less tidy, or differently tidy? does giving mammals their ubiquination genes cause greater longevity?

Edited by treonsverdery, 08 February 2012 - 05:41 PM.