In a message dated 3/13/00 7:24:07 AM Pacific Standard Time,
bradbury@aeiveos.com writes:
> Elephants are supposed to go through many molars but
> the replacment function is limited (whether by genetics or failure
> of the replacement tissue is unclear),
Elephants are born with 5 molars; each wears out
and is replaced by the next. When the last wears
out, the elephants dies. So it's both, really;
the proximate cause is failure of the replacement
tissue (the extra molars) but clearly a genetic change
(probably a small one; molar count varies among great
apes) could give them an extra 1 or 2.
>In humans it isn't so much tooth loss
>but failure of taste & smell (leading to decreased interest in food)
>and failure of the gut (leading to decreased nutrient absorption).
In us, yes, but in our hunter-gatherer ancestors tooth loss might have been
a big problem. Since their lives are largely responsible for our genes, our
"aging" genes might be tuned for near-certain death shortly after middle
age even though that no longer applies to us.
>Yep, but the nice thing about nature is that we have examples of genetic
>programs that solve some of these problems. Humans can "borrow" the
>tooth replacement strategy of elephants or even better sharks. The
>anti-cancer program of elephants or whales also would be useful.
Very. We have tolerable mechanical replacements for teeth, but cancer
is still very bad news.
>Precisely. To solve aging you have to knock off the problems one by one.
>As you solve each, you will reveal something that was previously
>unnoticed. Fortunately we have enough insights at this point that
>we can work on the problems simultaneously.
This is true even if there *is* a single genetic cause for "aging".
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 27 2000 - 14:05:01 MDT