How can jellyfish be immortal?

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I heard about these [immortal jellyfish](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turritopsis_dohrnii) that are ‘[biologically immortal](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_immortality)’. I have three questions that I would like to have eli5:
1. How can animals be biologically immortal?
2. What can we learn from it in terms of human aging science and biotechnology?
3. What would it take for humans to ‘achieve’ biological immortality?

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3 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

1.) The immortal jellyfish is functionally immortal because instead of dying they revert themselves to the beginning of their lifecycle. The thing is it’s more like a clone than a true continuation of life.

2.) From the jellyfish? Not much, humans are far too complex to revert back to a simpler form like a fertilized egg or fetus.

3.) There are plenty of theorized ways. The most practical is probably electronic immortality, ie uploading a copy of your brain into a machine. There are plenty of other ways but you can look them up pretty easily.

Edit: A cool sci-fi way of biological immortality was explored in one of my favorite games “The Turing Test”, essentially A microorganism would use the human as a host and implant itself in a human cells, then via a symbiotic relationship would regenerate the telomeres at the end of DNA. The deterioration of Telomeres is a big part of aging as Telomeres function as a buffer against DNA damage, but over time they get chipped away until your DNA starts getting damaged which leads to improper duplication and malfunctioning cells.

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