5 replies to this topic

[brokenportal]

[hivemind]

How long can cancer cells live?

[niner]

How long can cancer cells live?

HeLa cells have been reproducing since 1951, about 90 years since her birth, and now weigh in total an estimated 400 times Henrietta Lacks' adult body weight. In a petri dish, such cells are essentially immortal, although very few cancer cells are as good at reproducing as HeLa. If all your somatic cells had telomerase constitutively activated like HeLa cells, and assuming you didn't get cancer, you would still age in other ways. Your proteins would still get glycated, you would still accumulate amyloids, you'd still accumulate lysosomal junk, lipofuscin, etc. I don't know what aging would look like in such a case. It would be different. People are working on ways to fix those problems, along with ways to extend telomeres.

[hivemind]

I see, they are not really immortal but can divide indefinitely?

Edited by Trip, 11 October 2011 - 03:52 AM.

[Elus]

There is a physical limit to how large an animal can get. It has to do with the surface:volume ratio. As your surface area gets bigger (Surface area is X*X=X^2) your volume increases even faster (X*X*X=X^3). Therefore, you may not be able to have such a huge human being made of biological substrates because of the inherent limits of diffusion, feeding, etc that are imposed by volume increases.

Personally, I'd opt for being incredibly small yet extremely intelligent/strong/immortal/>insert other godlike characteristic here<

[Elus]

Oops, the above was meant to be posted in another thread, LOL. You can delete this post and the one above, BP!