Improving Healthspan and Lifespan By Re-elevating Protein Levels

Discussion in 'Biology & Genetics' started by davidelkins, Jan 12, 2017.

  1. davidelkins Registered Senior Member

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    • Please do not post nonsense or pseudoscience to the Science subforums.
    Here is a plan for improving healthspan and lifespan. Take the 100 proteins in the body that decrease the most in concentration from age 20 to age 100, determine what they are, then make a pill containing each. That is 100 pills. Have an 80 year old person consume those 100 pills per day. What effect would this have on the body? This is what I would call the Re-elevation Plan. Certainly other criteria can be used other than degree of decrease of concentration. There are many possible combinations of proteins and some of those combinations might result in vastly improved healthspan and lifespan. What is needed is a database of proteins and protein levels relative to age. Also, a chosen combination of foods could replace pills perhaps. Does anyone know of such databases or is anyone out there interested in making such a database? DE
     
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  3. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    No.
     
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  5. river

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    No , what exactly ?
     
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  7. rpenner Fully Wired Valued Senior Member

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    Nothing in medicine or biology works like the OP needs it to work. There is no evidence that davidelkins engages with his own ideas to see if they are worthy of being shared, but in this case the answer is clearly not. So he gets a 1 day warning and a third warning not to repeat this violation of forum rules.

    Here are some of the problems:

    Human beings are too valuable to be subjected to 100-pill-a-day experimental regimes without strong evidence of differential benefit.

    By law, only doctors can advocate plans for human experimentation and those need to go past ethical review boards to balance expected benefits versus risks and human suffering.

    But there can be no evidence of differential benefit because vertebrate digestion necessarily destroys proteins before they are taken up in the blood stream as monomers (amino acids). Likewise, proteins in the blood stream don't magically cross structural barriers to appear in cells where they are claimed to be needed (on no basis whatsoever). The quantity of 100 pills seems like a quantity which is oddly both too specific and completely indefinite. Finally, ingestion of human proteins is tantamount to cannibalism and due to their tertiary structure, there is no economic way to synthesize the same proteins in un-denatured state in the quantities suggested.

    "Grandpa looks old because he's not eating enough babies" is not a "plan" that makes sense in medicine or biology.

    Should I move this thread?
     
    Last edited: Jan 13, 2017
    exchemist likes this.
  8. Kristoffer Giant Hyrax Valued Senior Member

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    1,364
    Cess it.
     
  9. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    12,451
    Yes I think so. The poster himself never seems interested in taking up a discussion on these random and nonsensical subjects he starts. I suspect he is a psychiatric case of some kind.
     
  10. davidelkins Registered Senior Member

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    No, I'm not a psychiatric case. I don't see where the cannibalism charge comes from honestly. DE
     
  11. davidelkins Registered Senior Member

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    If you look at the regulation of gene expression over the lifespan of an individual and if you determine the regulation at age 20 and age 100, if you then found a way to alter an 80 year old's regulation to that of a twenty year old, would this result in increased lifespan and healthspan? This is a question that I pose to rpenner.. By the way, my opening argument was flawed, I will admit. DE
     
  12. davidelkins Registered Senior Member

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    108
    Is there a gene or genes that are activated at age 1 that signal to the other genes to perform gene expression appropriate for a one year old? Futhermore, is there a gene or genes that are activated at age 20 that signal to the other genes to perform gene expression appropriate for a twenty year old? Lastly, if there were a gene that signals for twenty year old gene expression regulation, then if that gene were activated in an 80 year old, would the body of the 80 year old begin to exhibit the physiology of a 20 year old, thus increasing lifespan and healthspan? DE
     
  13. rpenner Fully Wired Valued Senior Member

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    4,833
    Human proteins are found in human beings. You advocate consumption of human proteins, thus advocate cannibalism. Specifically, you advocate hunting out those human proteins not found in "normal" concentration in the in subject, so this is not mere fingernail biting. While you may have envisioned some technological workaround to synthesize a hundred different proteins, their character is still "human proteins" regardless of synthesis method and will tests as such in forensic labs, state law definitions, and some religious authorities. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cannibalism
    There is no technological workaround for obtaining these human proteins other than cannibalism for the reason that the gene sequence alone does not define the tertiary structure, splicing, and covalent modification of a protein. Consequently, each protein synthesis project is a large one, so your 100-protein project involves an unbounded number of man-years to no good effect, given above discussion of how vertebrate digestion works.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein_primary_structure#Modification
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein_tertiary_structure
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein_quaternary_structure
    Does geriatric medicine reduce to a problem of gene regulation? No. Look at scars. They are ugly to look at because the human body has a careful dance of regulation on how to grow from zygote to breeding 20-year olds. It doesn't have plans to replace missing limbs or organs or heal deep burns or cuts in the skin to the original condition. Some damage( like hearing loss, cardiac scarring, lens hardening, cataracts, telomere loss, etc) is forever. It's not simply a matter of regulation, it's often a matter of there not even being a plan.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scar
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ageing
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geriatrics
    I'm not a medical doctor. This is basic research which is expected by anyone interested in a field to find out what both the known ground and terra incognito is before proposing to set off on a hazardous and expensive expedition.
    I'm literally answering you with information I picked up decades ago as part of high school general biology class, with a few modern details picked up in 5 minutes of research on the internet. Other people may be more qualified to answer than I. And since I became a moderator, answering questions is far from all I do.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proteomics ⬅︎ Read all of this first.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_proteome_project

    Protein concentrations vary widely by tissue type and age (see image below). There is no central planning, everything is distributed to the individual cells which switch on and off various controls as a result of local conditions and transmitted hormones. Here is a map I made of some hedgehog-related proteins in the heart, liver and ovaries of human infants and adults.

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!


    http://www.humanproteomemap.org
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedgehog_signaling_pathway
    No. There is no such plan. Evolution has left us with a messy jury-rigged collection of crossed signals and good-enough efforts which remarkably works for a good long while most of the time. You don't fix a knotted web of interrelations just by pulling on familiar strings.
     
  14. davidelkins Registered Senior Member

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    I was not proposing cannabilism. I was wondering whether there was a way to synthesize protein entirely in a test tube without extracting the proteins from the body. Because I was not arguing for extraction, thus it was not cannabilism that I was advocating. Your skar comment is valid, but surely we cannot rule out the possibility of a limited number of genes that signal to the body the time for regulatory patterns of gene expression for different periods in the human life cycle. DE
     
  15. davidelkins Registered Senior Member

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    Is there a 10 base pair alteration to the human genome that can double the maximal human lifespan to 240 years? By 10 base pair alteration I mean the alteration of 10 base pairs to 10 other base pairs. Additionally, is there a 20 base pair alteration to the human genome that can double the maximal human lifespan to 240 years? What will end up being the minimal number of base pair alterations necessary to double the maximal human life span? DE
     
  16. origin Heading towards oblivion Valued Senior Member

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    No. Human have a maximum life span of about 120 years. As life expectancy has increased the maximum life span has not. It appears that around 120 years is a hard stop. I think it would be a nightmare to live to be 120 years old.
     

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