Bruce Lucana '21

Adaline Bowman, a 29-year old woman, was driving down a dark road one miraculous night in San Francisco just as snow started to fall. The year is 1908, and moments later, Mrs. Bowman crashes her car into the rails of a bridge, sending her unconscious body flying into cold waters. Decades later, the year is 1958, and Adaline is still 29-years old. The impossible happened to Mrs. Bowman in an instant those 50 years ago: she was rendered ageless at 29 years old. Does this sound familiar? Possibly farfetched? Maybe you’ve heard of The Age of Adaline, a film released in 2015 that tells the story of the young woman mentioned above. Science indicates that immortality may not be a fantasy for long.

Pondering the idea of immortality may send one into a spiral of overcomplicated thoughts, however, the answer to immortality, or possibly reversing the aging process, could be closer than you think. In reality, the potential solution is buried within all of us: our telomeres. Chromosomes are made up of densely coiled DNA and proteins that code for the unique nature of every single organism. The ends of the chromosomes are called telomeres, which are strands of nitrogenous-base sequences that act as buffers to protect the genetic material stored within the chromosomes. Similar in nature to the aglets at the ends of your shoelaces, telomeres keep the DNA within your chromosomes from being damaged and degraded. However, as we carry on with the trials and tribulations of life, our cells continue to divide but at a unique cost: the constant loss of our telomeres. Telomeres don’t appear to code for many of the important factors within our bodies that keep us alive and well, but, as they continue to erode and become shorter in length, the important DNA coiled up within our chromosomes gets closer and closer to becoming exposed, thus eventually degrading and causing the issue that haunts many of us: aging.

If our DNA becomes exposed and mutilated with time, how are we able to reproduce and give birth to healthy children with damaged DNA? Well, a little enzyme called telomerase could help to ensure a healthy population for years to come. Telomerase’s function is to replicate the telomeres with ease so that the lengths of the telomeres do not become exponentially shorter with time. Evidently, telomerase is not found in every single cell within our bodies, otherwise we wouldn’t age. This little “super” enzyme is only found within specific parts of the body: stem cells and the germ line. This includes the sex cells, eggs and sperm, all of which are crucial to life as we know it. Therefore, if telomerase is within our bodies and keeps the sex cells healthy and alive, one still might wonder, why we cannot inject telomerase into our body cells and keep us alive forever. As with all scientific questions, the answer is not this simple. First, we do not have telomerase readily available to just inject into all of our cells. Second, doing so could keep our telomeres at a reasonable length, but it could also make our body cells divide uncontrollably… sound familiar? Yes, the word that makes us all afraid: cancer. Cancer could be the outcome of this hasty scientific move, hence the years of research and experimentation to determine the direction that science must travel when it comes to exploring longevity.

Advances are made everyday in the world of molecular biology to try and understand the mechanisms behind the deterioration of telomeres. As human beings, we have evolved over time, allowing for the development of mechanisms within our bodies that prove beneficial for our survival. For example, opposable thumbs started off as a mutation within the DNA of ancient primates which soon became an asset to their locomotion as time went on. Thus, the mutation became favorable and, through the process of natural selection, we have opposable thumbs today. Aging poses some thought-provoking questions about evolutionary processes within the cell. “Is aging programmed or is it just decay? If you think of it like an old used car rusting out, is that just how aging works? Or could it be a built-in mechanism to suppress tumors?” asks Dr. David Zappulla, an assistant professor and researcher at Lehigh University, who focuses on the molecular machinery behind telomerase and cellular hallmarks of cell death. “There's, I think, a good deal of evidence in genetic organisms, like yeast, that it is programmed. And there are mutants that suddenly after, have three times the lifespan of normal yeast. So, it seems like there are genes that are responsible for us aging. And so therefore, you would think it's a programmed process, at least, to some degree.”

As is crucial for much of the research that we have today, experimentation must be done on certain organisms in order to study the effects and connect some of the outcomes to humans. Aside from the germ line, stem cells, which can be found in places such as the bone marrow, are cells that have no specialized function yet. In other words, they have the potential to develop into any type of cell such as a neuron, liver cell, heart cell, etc. In a study done on mice using stem cells, scientists were able to cultivate a culture of stem cells in a petri dish and allow these cells to divide on their own. The beauty of stem cells is that they have the unique nature of containing active telomerase within their cell’s machinery. Due to this essence of stem cells, the culture of the cells created in the petri dish had unusually long telomeres and mice were bred using these cells. It was found that the mice bred with these stem cells showed roughly a 12.74% increase in longevity - these mice lived an above-average lifespan. Not only did these mice live longer, but they also had decreased risks for tumors that accompany age. Now that I think of it, I never thought I would be so jealous of mice.

With scientists constantly conducting genetic experimentation to fight against the effects of time, science approaches the key to unlocking the secret to staying young forever. Humans are arguably much more complex than some species like mice biology-wise, which may serve as one of the larger problems when it comes to drawing parallels from experiments successfully conducted on other species. However, whether it be finding a way to modify telomerase levels within the body, or tinkering with stem cells as we continue on in our pursuit to discovering the answer to eternal life, “I have great confidence, almost absolute confidence, that in a matter of centuries we'll have definitely improved our lifespan by decades” says Dr. Zappulla. Maybe we could all live a life just like Adaline, though, god-willing, without the car crash.

Bibliography

Shammas, M. A. (2011, January 1). Telomeres, lifestyle, cancer, and aging. PubMed Central (PMC). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3370421/

Fox, S. (2008, September 5). How the Human Got His Thumbs. Popular Science. https://www.popsci.com/stuart-fox/article/2008-09/how-human-got-his-thumbs/

Generation of mice with longer and better preserved telomeres in the absence of genetic manipulations. (2020, September 3). PubMed Central (PMC). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4895768/