Perhaps most of you already know this, but if you don't, I think it's
interesting.
I couple of weeks ago, I believe it was Damien Broderick who claimed an
experiment where mice without telomerase were produced and appeared to
be fine by their fourth generation.
I took a look around to confirm this. I contacted Dr. Lee M. Silver at
Princeton, I contacted both scientists who immortalized cells with
telomerase, etc. The most important things I learned were: (1) By the
6th generation, the mice are infertile. (2) The mice's telomers do
shorten and almost disappear by the 5th generation. (3) The researchers
instigated cancer cells from the mice cells without telomerase and these
cancer cells -- who also don't have telomerase -- appear to be immortal
(more than 360 divisions). (4) Somatic cells on the 6th generation show
chromossome imbalance and other genetic errors, they also don't
proliferate normally. If you want to learn more about it, check out:
http://www.sciencenews.org/sn_arc97/10_11_97/fob1.htm
See ya,
--
Hasta la vista...
"Life's too short to cry, long enough to try." - Kai Hansen
Reason's Triumph at: http://homepage.esoterica.pt/~jpnitya/