Kind: captions
Language: en
[Applause]
10,000 years ago the average human life
lasted just over 30 years then 100 years
ago that number was up to 50 and if you
were born in the last few decades in the
developed world then your life
expectancy is 80 years but that is of
course assuming that no major
breakthroughs happen during your
lifetime that can slow the process of
aging and that may be a very bad
assumption
there's a new series on National
Geographic Channel which was developed
with GE and the show's creators wanted
to present my take on Aging so I'm here
at the GE Global Research Center to talk
to principal scientist Dr Fiona ginty
and this would be kind of an example of
you know one of the types of images we
would generate so what are we looking at
here so these are our cells that are are
actively dividing and these are cells
that are heading on their way to death
or apoptosis
aging is not recognized as a disease I
mean there are plenty of diseases we do
acknowledge like diabetes heart disease
Alzheimer's and at their core aging may
be responsible for all of them and yet
aging seems natural because it's
something that we do from birth and for
a while it makes us better bigger
stronger faster more intelligent but
then at some point in your life it
reverses and aging makes our bodies
Decay and degrade why is that why do we
have to age why do our bodies have to
Decay well scientists are now realizing
there is a fundamental cellular
mechanism at the heart of Aging do we
age at the macroscopic level because our
cells are aging at the microscopic level
to a great extent yes there's only a
finite number of times a cell will
divide key Discovery was made by a
biologist named haick he was studying
normal human cells and what he found was
they can only divide a finite number of
times on average it's about 50 beyond
that the cell becomes ccent which means
it's a aged cell it can divide no longer
it lives for a little while but it's the
accumulation of these ccent cells in our
bodies that leads to aging on the
macroscopic scale so it's as though
cells have this little timer inside them
that tells them when to stop dividing
but how do they know and what is that
timer so talir are like the uh you so
like your shoelaces have you know a
little bit of U plastic at the end to
stop them from fraying so talir are like
the ends of your Sho laces but for
chromosomes but for chromosomes so they
stop the chromos they keep the
chromosome together and they stop it
sticking to other chromosomes and so
every time a cell divides um it loses
some of the talir they estimate about
200 base pairs why is that why can't it
just copy to the end you know it's just
sort of really the mechanics of it you
know there's only so much space when
they DNA polymerase does its job of
replicating yeah so the tiir and the
tiir getting shorter is like your
molecular clock the cellular clock
inside each cell that tells it how many
times it has divided would you want to
have your tiir
measured well people do get their T Mir
measured there have been associations
made with lifestyle with exercise
showing that longer telr are associated
with you know a more active lifestyle
exercise what if there was a way to stop
the tiir from
shortening if we could do that maybe the
cells would live forever uh there's
another enzyme involved called talamas
and it keeps rebuilding like it doesn't
let the talir ever shrink so it it
rebuilds the telr right exactly there is
one animal that doesn't seem to age and
that that is the lobster it just gets
bigger over time it doesn't get weaker
and its chromosomes don't change it has
long tares that do not shorten so it
only dies when it gets eaten by
something else like
us so how could we be more like a
lobster some people would say maybe I
want my taras to be higher for longer
mhm would that help I mean would that
keep us younger I mean it's balanced
because you know in cancer you've got
perfect example of talamar being active
and it becomes an unregulated growth
situation this is the double-edged sword
of tiir and
Tas cancer cells have really long
tiir and they can divide indefinitely
and that is the problem with cancer
cancer is dividing cells that won't stop
and they won't die so in a way cancer
is the immortal cell living within us so
maybe we've developed the aging process
maybe we have tiir that shorten for a
very good reason because otherwise they
could become cancerous so one of the
theories there is that the cells divide
that limited number of times because
they um it stops them from accumulating
damage that may may be detrimental so
there's cause them to become cancer
exactly over the past years developments
in medicine have increased human
lifespan more than we could have
imagined and I can only expect that the
next 100 years will bring similarly
incredible results I'm not sure where or
how they will take place but you can bet
that your life expectancy today will not
be the actual age at which you
die do you want to find out more about
the future of Aging well then you should
definitely check out the episode of
breakthrough which was directed by Ron
Howard that's airing on Sunday November
29th at 98 Central that is just one of
six episodes of breakthrough which was
developed by National Geographic Channel
and GE so I want to thank them for
supporting veritasium and I want to
thank you for
watching oh and I also made a video
about the future of energy it's over on
the GE YouTube channel so go check it
out