Ageing is so many different things, and cells being able to self-renew is part of the picture but not all of it.
Interpretation
Ageing involves various biological processes, including cellular self-renewal, which are part of a complex picture.
In this quote, Elizabeth Blackburn emphasizes that aging cannot be defined solely by the biological ability of cells to regenerate. It encompasses a multitude of factors and processes, suggesting that our understanding of aging is complex and multifaceted, requiring a broader exploration beyond just cellular mechanisms.
In practice
In a lecture on longevity, this quote beautifully illustrates the complexity of the ageing process.
Cancer cells have had so many other things go wrong with them, genetic, non-genetic changes, that those cells, one of the things they then get selected for is that they have lots of telomerase because now the telomeres in those cells get maintained.
We and other groups are seeing clear statistical links between telomere shortness and risk for a variety of diseases that are becoming very common, such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes and certain cancers.
Checking your telomere length is a bit like weighing yourself: you get this single number which depends on a lot of factors. Telomere length gives a sense of your underlying health.
We think there are lifestyle factors that boost telomerase naturally.
For me, arguably the story of telomeres and telomerase began thousands of years ago, in the cornfields of the Maya highlands of Central America.
If we think of our chromosomes - they carry our genetic material - as being like shoelaces, I work on the plastic tips at the end that protect them.
In the midst of all dwells the Sun. For who could set this luminary in another or better place in this most glorious temple, than whence he can at one and the same time brighten the whole.
In fourth grade, I was interested in all areas of science. I particularly loved learning about how the earth was created.
It was strange, in a way, because there were no ideas involved in the laser that weren't already known by somebody 25 years before lasers were discovered. The ideas were all there; just, nobody put it together.
Modern science should indeed arouse in all of us a humility before the immensity of the unexplored and a tolerance for crazy hypotheses.
New, distant Scenes of endless Science rise: So pleas'd at first, the towring Alps we try.
No human investigation can be called real science if it cannot be demonstrated mathematically.
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