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

[lestatdark]

padib said:

lestatdark said:

I must say, for all the time wasted posting my replies in this thread, it's been worth it as it has been quite a fun day today in the laboratory with all that's going on in the thread. Haven't seen my observer (pHD on molecualr genetics and a deeply devout christian as well) quite amused over an "article" for a long while.

I'd really like you to know that you really pissed me off.

Anyway, here is the fundamental question. Was the following phrase in the article accurate, despite all your explanations, or not?

"Since it now appears that much of aging is under genetic control"

Next question, because I think we're both running out of patience here. Do you think that the description below corresponds to autosomal inheritance or sex-linked dominance (I'm unclear on the definitions):

"In the example shown above diagrammatically, the ‘G’ form of the gene is present in father and not in mother. "

As for a gene that dictates age, the article doesn't mention that. It mentions a series of genes in:

"it is entirely feasible that some forms of the genes present in Noah were not passed on."

and

"Since it now appears that much of aging is under genetic control" note the vast statement here.

It pissed you off why? I was referring to the article, not your replies. The fact that the writter uses an unethical way to present his theory is what's laughable.

The phrase is not entirely correct, that's what I've been trying to say all along, even before you posted your link. Genetics could be a factor in the aging process, but only to a certain extent. I've also said it's possible to further the life span via alternative means such as the regeneration of the DNA itself to some earlier states (stem regeneration). The scenario that we could live further and further beyond 150-200 years is not entirely impossible, but it cannot be achieved if we only focus the issue on trying to manipulate our genome to do it itself, since there's a natural limit to it. 

What the author described was sex-linked inheritance just like the inheritance of characteristics such as skin pigmentation, hair colour and even iris pigmentation. Those cases all are sex-linked inheritance which is not autossomical per se. In sex-linked inheritance both parents could have a gene that has been repressed for a large number of generation and via recombination it can gain expression again. In the case of autossomical inheritance, if the capital G gene was part of an allele that was methylated to avoid expression in any generation and if that trait has been passed down by either father or mother, then that characteristic has a very limited probability of it beign expressed again, unless some external input (metabolism, hormonal signalling, cancerous malformation, etc.) presses the DNA for it's expression.

A gene or genes is moot. Again, DNA is conservative, whatever genes our ancestors had, we still have them. They might not be expressed, they might be methylated, there might have been an acylation of the histones surrounding those genes to prevent binding of the DNA polymerase and a plethora of other reasons as to why a particular gene or set of genes aren't expressed.

Genetics program cell death and determine the aging of the cell, but it's a very big leap in judgment to say that it also controls the entire life span of an individual, whatever species it is. We simply have no data to determine it and every recent study in vertebrates (the studies of enhancing life-spans on nematods and fruit flies have no relevance in vertebrates, since the metabolical and genetical pathways are too different to elate any relationship between them without accounting for external factors) show that it's a conjunction of metabolical, genetical and external factors that play a role in our lifespan. 

And with that I rest my case