Holy Benjamin Buttons!

What if life was cyclical, rather than linear? What if rather than dying, you simply reverted back to being an infant? If you've ever seen the movie The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, then you've seen this first hand. While we all know with current technology this would be impossible, one animal may hold the genetic map to the fountain of youth.

The turritopsis nutricula jelly fish can be found in warm waters. They and travel alone by following the ocean currents. While they may seem harmless, these 4-5mm in diameter jellies pack quite a sting, and are known to send victims to the hospital. See what they look like here. However, their sting isn't what's causing a buzz among the scientific community. The turritopsis nutricula species of jelly fish (also known as the hydrozan), is the only animal known that can revert back to it's polyp state (first stage of life) repeatedly. It develops into a mature adults than reverts back to it's polyp stage, meaning there may be no natural limit to it's life span.

The jellies are able to live forever due to a process called transdifferentiation. This is the same process salamanders use to regrow their tails. This is done by transforming one type of cell into another type of cell. Salamanders however, can only undergo limited transdifferentiation, meaning they can only regenerate specific organs. The hydrozan jelly fish can undergo an unlimited amount of transdifferentiations, meaning they can regenerate their entire bodies over and over again.

The process the jelly fish undergoes involves turning itself into a jelly like blob. This blob then turns into a polyp colony, which is the first life stage of the jelly fish. Within the colony, a sort of asexual reproduction occurs, resulting in hundreds of jelly fish that are an exact genetic copy of the original. This means that a jelly fish found floating off the coast of Cape Cod could have the exact same genetics as a jelly floating near the coast of South Africa.

While researches aren't looking into using this information as the new fountain of youth, they are looking to the jellies as a possible cure for cancer. According to biologist Stefano Piraino like cancer cells "some cells of this jellyfish that were supposed to [die] … are able to switch off some genes and to switch on some other genes, reactivating genetic programs that were used in earlier stages of the life cycle".

While the jellies don't offer the key to the elixir of life, or directions to the fountain of youth, the possibilities are endless. What if someday, instead of dying, humans simply reverted back to their infancy, and made hundred of exact copies of themselves. I don't know about you but one is enough of some people.

P.S- I feel that the Harry Potter background music in this video is very fitting.

I got my information from...

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/article5594539.ece

I have used the UK Times as sources in several other projects and have often found them to be unbiased, but sometime they fail to address the details of a subject well enough.

http://green.yahoo.com/blog/guest_bloggers/26/the-world-s-only-immortal-animal.html?pg=3

Unless it's the answeres section, Yahoo is alwaysa a great source for short, straight to the point articles.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/01/090130-immortal-jellyfish-swarm_2.html

National Geographic is one of my all time favorite sources! They are great for any level of reader, and their site includes games and awesome photo slide shows. Their articles go in depth, but don't sound too snobbish.

Nevermore Nevermore

Imagine for a moment that you never had to worry about death at all. Do you think it would change how you lived your life? This question may soon have more relevance than you think. Certain scientist and philosophers believe that true immortality is achievable within the first few decades past the 21st century. However, even the more conservative scientists acknowledge that life extension is far more likely. Around the globe research is being done in the ever-progressing quest to find the proverbial "fountain of youth". After years of research one researcher believes he may finally have the answer.

Meet Aubrey de Grey, a researcher who believes that his plan for ending aging may be able to be implemented within a few decades, in his book Ending Aging Aubrey talks about how ending aging and debilitation in humans is not only feasible but will be able to be implemented shortly. His proposal is to use what he calls "regenerative medicine" to cause the body to be in a constantly youthful state.

Quite honestly this scares me. The fear and inevitability of death is one of the constant motivators of human existence. Without that to subconsciously guide us I fear for our existence as a species. Aside from speculative concerns there is the realistic concern that if immortality were to be made available to us at large over population would become even more of a problem than it is now. Additionally, if the medicine was not widely available it wold create a ruling upper class to rule society that would simply never die. Thereby creating a class seperation that would be almost impossible to overcome. On a whole I believe immortality is bad for the human race as a whole because it would represent the virtual end to freedom working in our world and , in my own humble opinion, it would lead to the downfall of the human race as we know it.

deGrey, Aubrey. "SENS FOUNDATION Mission" Sens Foundation. Web. 6 Sep 2010.