Naked Mole Rats Defy Mortality Mathematics (discovermagazine.com) 320
An anonymous reader shares a report: Naked mole rats are adorably ugly creatures that challenge what we think we know about aging. Naked mole rats can live to be 30 years old. Further, female mole rats show no signs of menopause, and remain highly fertile even into their final years of life. Neurogenesis in naked mole rats continues over two decades, and their hearts and bones don't seem to change significantly over time. They rarely get cancer. Hell, they can even live up to 18 minutes utterly deprived of oxygen.
[...] At Google's biotech company, Calico, in San Francisco, California, biologist Rochelle Buffenstein is looking to the naked survivors to unlock their secrets of aging. Buffenstein says naked mole rats violate to the Gompertz-Makeham law, and she has over 3,000 data points to back her conclusion. After reaching adulthood six months into their lives, a naked mole rat's mortality risk remained the same for the rest of its days her analysis revealed. Rather than grow exponentially, a naked mole rat's risk of death on any given day, no matter their point in life, hovered around 1 in 10,000. Surprisingly, their mortality risk even fell a little when they grew very old. In this sense, Buffenstein writes, naked mole rats have established themselves as "a non-aging mammal. This life-history trend is unprecedented for mammals," Buffenstein and colleagues wrote in a study published recently in the journal eLife.
[...] At Google's biotech company, Calico, in San Francisco, California, biologist Rochelle Buffenstein is looking to the naked survivors to unlock their secrets of aging. Buffenstein says naked mole rats violate to the Gompertz-Makeham law, and she has over 3,000 data points to back her conclusion. After reaching adulthood six months into their lives, a naked mole rat's mortality risk remained the same for the rest of its days her analysis revealed. Rather than grow exponentially, a naked mole rat's risk of death on any given day, no matter their point in life, hovered around 1 in 10,000. Surprisingly, their mortality risk even fell a little when they grew very old. In this sense, Buffenstein writes, naked mole rats have established themselves as "a non-aging mammal. This life-history trend is unprecedented for mammals," Buffenstein and colleagues wrote in a study published recently in the journal eLife.
Hmm! (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe hanging out in your mom's basement in the dark is a successful long-life strategy>
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Re:Hmm! (Score:4, Informative)
, but like extending strategies which reduce chances for procreation tend to be selected against...naturally.
Unless you take the path many insects do, where most individuals aren't involved in procreation: there's just a queen, and a few males kept around for the purpose. Bizarrely, this is how naked mole rates work - they have an insect hive, complete with drones and massive queen.
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Ya, but you need to be naked too.
Google (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Google (Score:5, Insightful)
Money certainly can buy more life. It can't buy endless life - at least not yet - but a plentiful supply of money allows access to a lot of expensive treatments which will cure conditions that might kill a less-financed patient. Buying time, in a quite literal manner.
Re:Google (Score:5, Informative)
For the high UIDs in the room, GPP was quoting a Kansas song:
Now, don't hang on, nothing lasts forever but the earth and sky
It slips away
And all your money won't another minute buy
Dust in the wind
All we are is dust in the wind
It's more of a philosophical statement than a practical one: entropy is going to win in the end.
Re:Google (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Google (Score:5, Insightful)
Steve had the money AND the medical advice to try to help extend his life.
However HE made the choice to ignore them and try more holistic types of tx...and waited too long to try more proven medical tx.
He could likely still be alive if he'd listened to the original medical tx advice.
Not that other sources and types of medicine aren't valuable, I believe they are, but when it comes to cancer, you need to try the prevailing medical recommendations there, you don't fuck with the big "C"...
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Not that other sources and types of medicine aren't valuable, I believe they are, but when it comes to cancer, you need to try the prevailing medical recommendations there, you don't fuck with the big "C"...
What I find relevant is that his cancer was supposedly relatively treatable when he found out about it, if he had gone with the usual. He would have been able to afford the absolute best care, which I should think affords pretty decent odds. If I had some kind of cancer which modern medical technology was at a loss to explain and was generally unable to treat, I would probably explore quackish alternatives. Otherwise...?
Re:Google (Score:4, Informative)
Once it was clear that Jobs had the rare islet-cell pancreatic cancer, there was an excellent chance of a cure. According to Cleveland Clinic gastroenterologist Maged Rizk, MD, there’s an overall 80% to 90% chance of 5-year survival. In the world of cancer survival, that’s a huge milestone.
https://blogs.webmd.com/breaki... [webmd.com]
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Wrong. When you go, you will be much admired for doing it.
Welcome to the Monkey House.
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So, honest question: why haven't you committed suicide yet, if you so strongly believe that you, and everything else in the universe, are completely worthless?
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Well, good luck with both solving biological mortality and the heat-death of the universe.
In the meantime I would suggest finding some other yardstick of self-worth, because even if you somehow succeed in both, odds are pretty good that some accident or other will kill you sometime in the next 100^100,000,000,000 years.
Also, you might consider giving a little credit to all those great minds that came before you and made it possible for you to succeed - because there's zero chance you could solve either prob
Re:Google (Score:4, Insightful)
So Nikola Tesla is as worthless as you, because he died? Yea, never mind all that contribution he made to society, all that technology he invented that dumbasses like you use and fail to appreciate every day.
You really should have stopped about 20 comments ago.
Re:Google (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not so much concerned with everyone else, I want ME to live on.
Hell, if the vampire thing really worked, I'd opt in for that for immortality in a heartbeat.
I really like living here on earth, and would do just about anything to prolong my time here, especially if I could stop the aging process.
To me, and I'd guess most everyone else...your own life *IS* the most precious thing you own and would do most anything to keep it.
At least with normal people....
Re:Google (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Google (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps your outlook changes in your 80s and 90s because there is no point in dreading something which is inevitable. If medical science changes to the point where people can live to 150+ with good quality of life (a very big if), then I would expect most 90-year-olds would want to hang on to life as much as I do.
That's assuming, of course, that your original premise is correct. That's a hard thing for me to know, because I'm not old enough yet.
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I think the founders of Google should spend more time on making the current world a better place
Funding health research is making the world a better place.
Re: Google (Score:4, Insightful)
It's really hard to manage your resources effectively when you've been strip-mined by a foreign military power, and continue to be governed by colonial-style governments which, while now under the control of locals, are still designed to their core to pillage the natives, rather than function as anything resembling a Western-style government.
Meanwhile, most of the aid we've delivered could hardly be delivered in a manner better designed to destroy any hope they have of getting back on their feet. Local farms are struggling to produce food in a cost-effective manner, so what do we do? Supply the farms with the infrastructure (pumps, etc) necessary to produce the food needed? No. Guarantee them a fair price for their produce so they can secure the funding needed for such upgrades themselves, and then distribute that food to the starving? No. We ship in and distribute free food, and predictably destroy the local market for food, forcing farmers to grow non-food export crops to have any chance of paying their bills.
Bottom line - the problem is not the starving people, they've done nothing wrong except not rise up and overthrow their well armed colonial governments. The problem was created and sustained by the interference of Western governments. If our goal was to help them, then doing nothing whatsoever would have been a better long-term strategy than what we've done.
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So..wanting to live as long as possible, and regarding the very life you have and own as the most important thing, is being "self centered"?
Wow...you must be pretty willing to lose your life..I mean, if it isn't that important to you.
If that's he case, yeah, I guess I"m self centered.
I'm a loving, giving person...to a poi
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Um, yeah. That is a pretty good definition.
Where did I say life wasn't important or I wanted to lose mine?
Agreed.
Yes. Many normal people do. But if you are self-centered I guess you wouldn't.
That makes sense since you are a narcissist.
People make sacrifices every day for others. Sorry you don't see it.
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I used to think being self centered was some sort of "bad" thing....
But thanks to your definitions of it, it isn't bad, it is just a normal way of life and thinking. Self survival is a natural trait in most of us here on earth.
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Would you give your life for someone else?
I like to think that I would, but not just anybody. There are a few people important enough to me that I feel witnessing their death would ruin my life anyway, and I'd rather die than let that happen.
It's probably confirmation bias, but the fact that this tendency has not been stamped entirely out of humanity suggests to me that it is in fact a benefit to the species.
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That's interesting.
While I have people I dearly love and would feel horrible about seeing them die...
Personally, I cannot think of a person or cause or thing that would be worth me giving up the only life that I know I'll ever have.
Time heals all emotional wound
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Wow. You must be a scientist. So knowledgeable.
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There is, much as we ego-centric people dislike it.
If nobody died, the planet would be even more overrun with us than currently. Imagine the population crisis then!
I'm not so much concerned with everyone else, I want ME to live on.
You don't get it. GP is asking you nicely to die so he can breed more. How can you say no to such an altruistic sentiment?
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Everything is finite. You aren't too bright.
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Well, that one is.
Someone hand that kid a Tide pod...
Everything finite is inherently worthless (Score:4, Funny)
"everything finite is inherently worthless"
Far as we know everything is finite... therefore everything is worthless. You are on step 1 of being a Buddhist.
The proviso is that if the Universe is infinite then everything is infinite. For example you will make the above post an infinite number of times and I this one. A toast to infinity.
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OK ok... I agree with some of what you posted and don't understand the rest.
However if immortality and time travel were possible why wouldn't it already exist?
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The past is a lie, the future is an illusion. All that exists is the infinite present.
Re:Google (Score:4, Informative)
Having enough space is not the problem - the problem is having too much space, so that the finite amount of mass-energy in the universe gets spread too thin to support complex structures.
Also, if you have black holes then heat-death hasn't struck yet - they're still complex structure. But don't worry, they'll evaporate eventually, and then, when the last black holes have evaporated, heat-death will finally be complete.
And then, eventually, maybe, just the right quantum wrinkle will appear to spawn another big bang and spontaneously repopulate the universe - opinions vary on that question.
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Try again. The fact that you can't even be bothered to explain how your imaginary immortality machine would work suggests you're just tossing around words you heard somewhere. You can't magically generate energy in the ergosphere, you just drain it from the black hole itself, speeding its evaporation.
Meanwhile - unless you're spawning an entire independent closed pocket universe you haven't solved anything. The black holes will spiral in and merge (because they can't orbit each other indefinitely - at tho
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Black Mirror:White Christmas [wikipedia.org] shows there are a lot of ways for people outside the cloud to make life for people inside the cloud very unpleasant.
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Uploading one's consciousness is a post-Singularity idea. Post-Singularity, the living exist only at the whim of, well, whoever "won" the Singularity: AI or uploaded consciousness.
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Black Mirror has quite a few memorably nasty examples of people ruthlessly torturing conscious entities inside a simulation they control.
Absence of Solar Radiation? (Score:2)
Re:Absence of Solar Radiation? (Score:5, Interesting)
No solar radiation in their normal habitat is the biggest environmental factor.
There are plenty of other underground species that don't show this neoteny. And some that do, like axolotls, but without a greatly increased life span.
Nudity (Score:5, Funny)
The secret to a longer life is nudity.
Where is my science grant to study people in nudist colonies?
Re:Nudity (Score:5, Funny)
I imagine after not too long you and the below ground nudists will *wish* for a quick death.
Or they'll evolve into Morlocks and farm your Eloi ass.
So naked and ugly (Score:4, Insightful)
...is the way to go if you don't want to die.
They always say that they don't age and that they don't get cancer, but nobody ever tells us what's killing them.
Are they eaten by a grue?
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The summary and a bit of math point to the answer. On any given day, there's a 1 in 10,000 chance of them dying. 10,000/365 = 27 years and change, which pairs nicely with the "can live up to 30 years" statement.
Add in the "slight decrease in mortality rates as they get older", and that points to an early loss of those genetically unfit, and then random chances of random things killing them until they just can't beat the odds anymore.
So, in other words, a bathtub curve.
Re:So naked and ugly (Score:5, Informative)
No, absolutely not a bathtub curve.
A bathtub curve gives you a high probability of failing early on (manufacturing defects, etc), then a long period of relatively low, constant odds of failure, and then a climb back to a high probability of failure as things wear out. So that if you graph the odds of failure you get a U shape, or "bathtub cross-section"
They're claiming mole rats never get that final climb - in fact as they get really old the odds of dying actually *diminish*. That means that the older a mole rat gets, the better its odds are of still being alive in 10 years time.
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"That means that the older a mole rat gets, the better its odds are of still being alive in 10 years time."
So at 29 they have a high probability to live another 10 years but they almost die anyway with 30 years?
Re:So naked and ugly (Score:4, Informative)
According to the article - exactly. That what makes them so incredibly interesting. Not just that they live an extremely long time for their size, but that their mortality curve is completely unlike any other animal we know of. Their mortality curve is flat at a constant ~1/10,000 per day, regardless of how old they get, and actually falls slightly as they get older.
They "live to thirty" not because they get old and die around age thirty, but because most of them die at a much younger age so things average out to a 30 year "expected lifespan". At those odds, the "halflife" of a mole rat is 6931.125 days: (1-1/10,000)^6931 = ~50% chance of not having died. So, they have a 50% chance of living to see 19, and if they make it, they have a 50% chance of living to see 38. And if they make it to 38, they would have a 50% chance of making it to 57 - assuming age based mortality doesn't start to show its head by then. As they mention in the article, perhaps age-based mortality starts making itself felt eventually, but their oldest individual made it to 35 and they're not seeing any evidence of an age-based increase in mortality yet.
If they make it to 29 then they've got a better-than average chance of making it through the next 10 years as well, but they only have a 35% chance of making it to 29 in the first place.
Maybe they don't seem to age (Score:2)
Isn't the question why they die at 30? (Score:5, Insightful)
So, they reach maturity at 6 months and stay at the same point for the rest of their lives. I would like to know what kills them at 30.
Is it the telemores in their cells being used up and shutting down the animal or is there something else at play? Did they pass through a different evolutionary process which makes the established Gompertz-Makeham law invalid for them?
Can anybody comment?
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This why I chuckle when people worry about "immortality" and the moral impications.
If you just end aging and the accompanying decline, you'll still die at some point from accidents (Even if you do something like put your brain in an armored box and tele-operate your body).
So, if nothing else, there's a rusty old Volkswagen on an unfortunate spacetime trajectory intersecting with you at some point in your future.
You can reduce risk, but not eliminate it.
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tele-operate your body
Ok that is a pretty cool notion.
However you didn't consider the possibility of backing up your Self just like we do with data. Volkswagen takes you out? Restore backup to the day before Volkswagen event. But then we just segued into philosophy and what is Self and personal identity.
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If we clone you, and then kill you, you're still dead. Having a clone still running around doesn't make you any less dead.
Similarly, if we clone your mind, and then kill you, you're still dead. Having a mind-clone still running around doesn't make the original you any less dead.
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I've thought a fair bit about it, but it's unclear to me where the subjective individuality in me resides (even if it is just a convenient illusion that I foist off on myself).
Backup copies are certainly something you'd want if you have long term plans that you want achieved whether or not a particular instantiation of "you" is still around.
My personal suspicion is that Bones McCoy was right and the transporter isn't to be trusted. (But then again, does that mean he was knowingly committing suicide whenever
Re:Isn't the question why VWs die out? (Score:2)
The emissions scandal and the related monkey business may do more to that end than anything else.
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On a related note, I believe humans free from ageing and illness would statistically live an average of 1500 years before death by accident under modern Western conditions.
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When everyone you see is insane, look in a mirror.
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>Actually if you exclude auto accidents the life expectancy would increase even further.
Under the assumption we perfect self-driving cars in the next 1500 years, this is worth taking into account.
>If you exclude all accidents and allow for only predation the average life expectancy would shoot to a million.
Sure...
>Take predation away too, and man! you have become immortal.
Nope. Maintaining your current human body in perfect health would be insufficient as the Sun expands and cooks the Earth steril
Re:Isn't the question why they die at 30? (Score:5, Funny)
So, they reach maturity at 6 months and stay at the same point for the rest of their lives. I would like to know what kills them at 30.
Researchers?
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Yes indeed, anybody and everybody can comment.
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They surely are.
A couple of interesting (and funny) replies.
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So, they reach maturity at 6 months and stay at the same point for the rest of their lives. I would like to know what kills them at 30.
Carousel, obviously. That or the Sandmen.
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It's all about statistics--and 30 is the life expectancy (average), not the oldest they can live. For instance, a bird, the robin, can live to around 15 years old before it dies of "natural causes", but it's life expectancy is about 1 year because so many things kill it (accidents, predator, etc.). There are lots of things that kill living beings besides old age, like lab experiments. So all of these factors work together so that there's a probability distribution and expectation on a being's length of life
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Designed that way by the Tyrell Corporation.
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Have you considered reading the paper?
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Telomeres would cause an increase in mortality rates towards the end of life.
They eat poop. (Score:2)
May be that helps.
What is that? (Score:2)
That freaky thing? [youtube.com]
Two things going on (Score:2)
1) Mole rats don't live past 30.
2) But those their mortality does not INCREASE as they get older, until they get 30. THen they all start dying off in the next 2 years.
So they don't age till 30, then they die all of a sudden in the next 2 years, despite not being in bad shape.
That does not sound like 'immortal' to me.
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The Immortal Mole Rat? (Score:2)
On the flip side, if you could manage to keep a mole rat alive for an additional 40 years, I propose that all the problems we experience in our later years would start to appear.
There may be something
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I think the menopause thing is a red herring - only three mammalian species are known to experience menopause: humans, orcas, and pilot whales. Never experiencing menopause is the default assumption for mammals.
Similarly, I don't think weak hearts, etc. are a factor - anything like that would increase your risk of mortality as you age. Along with anything else that could be categorized as "wearing out" - cancer (cellular mutation "clean up" wears out), organ disease of any kind (scar tissue, etc. builds u
Re:The Immortal Mole Rat? (Score:4, Informative)
Humans can live to 80. That doesn't mean they all die by then, just that that's how long you expect a human to last on a good run. The article even mentions that the oldest rat in their lab is now 35.
With a 1/10,000 daily chance of mortality, mole rats have a half-life of ~19 years. Which means that the average lifespan of a molerat = 1.44*19y = 27.4 years.
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There's nothing groundbreaking in them aside from their paws.
Well played, sir.
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Humans live about 40-50% the span whales do, they just seem abnormal because primates don't normally live that long.
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Must be the environment. I tried dumping bunch of humans in the middle of the ocean and they didn't last very long at all.
Clearly the conclusion if we want to extend whale lifespans is to get them out of the ocean as soon as possible.
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And the dolphins think they're the smarter ones for THE EXACT SAME REASON.
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And the dolphins know they're the smarter ones for THE EXACT SAME REASON.
FTFY
Re:Hardly (Score:4, Informative)
Rodents don't usually even live one tenth that long. 30 years for a small mammal is an absurdly long time, and the fact the life span doesn't have the usual rough correlation to body mass and metabolic rate in this case would be the equivalent of humans living 1,000 years. You'd better believe this is a hat trick worth learning.
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Re:Missing the point (Score:4, Interesting)
If this were the case then people living in northern latitudes and in areas with little sunshine (think Seattle) would demonstratively have longer lives. You are reasoning rather shallow here.
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This whole comment is more or less complete garbage, because most of the background radiation humans et al are exposed to doesn't come from cosmic radiation: most of that is shielded by the air, near sea level the only thing that remains is muons, and that has no trouble penetrating a few dozen feet of, well, just about anything. Most background radiation comes from terrestrial sources, either from thorium/uranium in soil and rock or from radon, which is produced when uranium/thorium decays. In fact, I'd su
Re:The interesting question is... (Score:4)