Garden of Eden lays in the Persian Gulf? Not a religious thread.

[lestatdark]

padib said:

lestatdark said:

padib said:
What in our genes dictates that at 150 (barring out all other factors from the equation), at 150-200 years there is a complete loss of capacities of DNA repair? Is it a gene? Enlighten me.

This may be something you laugh at, but it provides explanations, which is something I understand to be encouraged in the elaboration of theories:

http://www.creationworldview.org/articles_view.asp?id=45

EDIT: I found this link more informative: http://creation.com/living-for-900-years

 

Okay, I just carefully read your post and of course I need to do some thinking. But the second link I provided resonates with what you're saying I don't see how even it is not science. Please do me a favor and tell me what part of this link you find unscientific.

http://creation.com/living-for-900-years

The article clearly says that the genetic coding of Telomeres is only part, albeit a big one, only part of the story. "So it looks as if some pre-programmed genetic limit, while not all there is to aging, could well be a big part of the story."

 

I'm certain they have thought about all the other things you describe, but it would take them "pages" to explain. Keep in mind these articles are for lay-people, so you don't judge the authors of the articles because the texts lack detail. You would judge the authors after e-mailing questions to them and reading their answers, that would be more fair.

As smart as some of you are, I'm sick of hearing you all jump the gun and calling these people pseudo-scientists everytime I bring up an article. Realize, again, that they are writing to laymen and can't burden the article with all the details involved. If needed they'll create another article to address the other processes you described.

But to help, could you list the main names of the processes you described in bullets? It's hard for me to synthesize your post.

Also thanks for taking the time to take all that information and making it easy to understand (for a non-biologist).

 

Let me deconstruct what's so unscientific in that link.

First - The assumption that there were human beings that lived over the theoretical limit of 150-200 years. Other than what's written in that ancient text which has no accountability nor scientific value, there's also no data, either fossilized nor C-14 dated skeletal data suggesting that in any point of the Homo Sapiens line there have been individuals with so much as close as to the theoretical limit. As you know, Carbon atoms degenerate in a strictly determined half-life span which can be used to date anything accurately if there's presence of C-14 isotopes in the sample. If any scientist worthy of his title uses the bible as any kind of data then his/her whole theory might as well go down the drain.

Second - There's not an average upper limited "programmed" for each species, that's quite frankly a very ridicule thing to say. Each different species has a varied number of chromossomes and a varied number of pair bases, meaning a varied genome. Humans aren't not nearly the ones with the largest genome nor the ones with the largest number of protein-coding genes, actually we're quite limited in the gene variation pool (hence we having one of the biggest cancer incidences of any species).
                 Each species has the telomere size in accordance to how much DNA it has to protect, how many divisions a cell must make or how functional a chromossome has to be (for example humans have 46 chromossomes as I said, and most of them are constitutively inactive during the majority of a person's life, so those chromossomes need to have a larger amount of telomores on their extremities to avoid any kind of damage during replication, as there's almost no proof-reading from the DNA polymerase on them.

Third - Loss of length of the telomere. That explanation (and the subsquent phrases which are not only unscientifc but also completely pointless in any kind of scientific discussion) is as flawed as it can be. Telomere length is constantly decreasing since the formation of the embrion. Each division shortens the telomeres a bit more, since the telomerase enzyme functions in a negative feedback loop (when the telomere reaches a certain length, the expression of telomerase is switched off and the telomere growth stops there). Initial telomere length hasn't varied in any kind of significative number since the first Homo Sapiens fossils were studied (for example, Mitochondrial Eve, the woman to which every person's mitochondria can be traced to had similar telomere length as any human nowadays. Since Mitochondrial Eve has been estimated to live 200.000 years ago, that alone is enough to ridicule the explanation on the link). Again, hard scientific data is more solid, valuable and reliable than any account of an unscientific book.

Fourth - The writter also uses the roles of dominant and repressed genes as an explanation of why some of the "longeviy" genes dissapeared via inheritance. Won't go explaining this to anyone, since dominance and repression is common 10th year biology knowledge, so any teenager can explain how ridiculous this part is. If Mendell was alive he would probably laugh veemently at it as well. Genes don't "dissapear" just because they weren't inherited when the embrio is formed, they simply are not expressed since other genes which have a function similar to those have a large % of dominance over them, thus the less dominant genes are repressed. Otherwise we would never have blue/green irises since their expression is only possible when the gene that codes for black/brown irises aren't dominant or co-dominant (dominant is when you have BB and co-dominant is when you have Bb expressions. Repressive expression can only be obtained when there's no B in the expression pair)

Fifth - The fruit flies and nematods (they're a different clade than the typical "worm", another error in the text) experiments were based mostly on different metabolical outputs rather than genetical manipulation. Drosophila Dranger are known for a fast response to external stimuli in their DNA, adapting rather quickly to almost any kind of signal you give them (also their genome is easily manipulated via gene therapies as it's a pretty short genome with a limited number of functional-genes), such is the case with the majority of species of nematods. If you change the metabolical conditions in a way that you slow down, to a large degree, the fruit fly adapts their tissues to increment the period between cellular divisions and use less amount of nutrients for protein expression and oxidative respiration, thus you "augment" their lifespan considerably. 
            The major problem is that most species don't have that capacity of extreme metabolical adaptation that fruit flies have, so those changes are usually lethal. Metabolical changes of such degree are only viable in mammal species such as ours if they're done in a large time-span (in the number of generations) and we know that our metabolical processes haven't changed that much since the early Homo Sapiens. 

There are some other errors that I could point out as well, but I figure that's about enough. Next time, provide an article that offers actual scientific data and uses proper knowledge about the subject instead of conjectures and manipulation of information to suit their views and outlooks, which is exactly what that site does.