Why do we age?
In: Biology
There’s a bit at the end of our DNA strands called a telomere. This ties the strand together somewhat how the little plastic bits on your shoelaces keep the ends from fraying.
Each time a cell divides the process of creating a new cell wears down the telomeres. There is “telomerase” in your cells that does work to repair the wear, but it doesn’t fully reverse it before the next division.
Eventually the telomeres wear down enough that errors start to make it into your cell division, which leads to degradation that manifests as aging.
Why don’t we have more telomerase to fix up the telomeres? Well because if you have too much telomerase you end up with cancer, which is a much more acute problem than aging.
Latest Answers