The world's only immortal animal

green.yahoo.com...

The turritopsis nutricula species of jellyfish may be the only animal in the world to have truly discovered the fountain of youth. Since it is capable of cycling from a mature adult stage to an immature polyp stage and back again, there may be no natural limit to its life span. Scientists say the hydrozoan jellyfish is the only known animal that can repeatedly turn back the hands of time and revert to its polyp state (its first stage of life). The key lies in a process called transdifferentiation, where one type of cell is transformed into another type of cell. Some animals can undergo limited transdifferentiation and regenerate organs, such as salamanders, which can regrow limbs. Turritopsi nutricula, on the other hand, can regenerate its entire body over and over again. Researchers are studying the jellyfish to discover how it is able to reverse its aging process. Because they are able to bypass death, the number of individuals is spiking. They're now found in oceans around the globe rather than just in their native Caribbean waters. "We are looking at a worldwide silent invasion," says Dr. Maria Miglietta of the Smithsonian Tropical Marine Institute. Bryan Nelson is a regular contributor to Mother Nature Network, where a version of this post originally appeared.

Mod Note: Starting A New Thread – Please Review This Link

[edit on Thu Mar 18 2010 by Jbird]

reply to post by Romantic_Rebel


Intresting. I recall another similar story about the 'healing' gene being found and tested on mice.
And now with this, i wounder if similar dna strands may be recognised.
Bet there'll be a lot of rich people investing more cash into this.

Itll would be weird growing younger then older again, wouldnt it!

As the last poster suggested, there will be lots of rich people investing in the research in this field.

It strikes me that the rich people that are going to invest in this, are rich, shallow, insecure, and definitely NOT the sort we want to have living forever.

Qigong or kundalini yoga will do this -- the small universe or microcosmic orbit exercise is the secret -- read "Taoist Yoga: Alchemy and Immortality" -- this teacher is an expert in it -- springforestqigong.com... -- he said to our class: "see you in 90 years" -- and he was 45 at the time so go figure!

China documented a man who died in the 1950s and was 250 years old!! His obituary was featured in the NY Times because the Chinese had the documents - a 250 old man....

www.martialdevelopment.com...

wow this is amazing, my only question is if they did this with humans, would the brain and memorys be the same as it was before the transdifferentiation?

Originally posted by drew hempel
Qigong or kundalini yoga will do this -- the small universe or microcosmic orbit exercise is the secret -- read "Taoist Yoga: Alchemy and Immortality" -- this teacher is an expert in it -- springforestqigong.com... -- he said to our class: "see you in 90 years" -- and he was 45 at the time so go figure!

China documented a man who died in the 1950s and was 250 years old!! His obituary was featured in the NY Times because the Chinese had the documents - a 250 old man....

www.martialdevelopment.com...

I dont buy those longevity claims at all. and if this yoga would help people live to be 135 and beyond, then where are these people?

reply to post by Totalstranger


The dude who lived to be 250 was an herb gatherer in the mountains -- he's well documented. So he lived a pure life away from civilization. In India there was Babaji -- the most famous immortal - but others live in the caves in China and India.

qigongmaster.com... is good for more information.

While it is very fascinating, I do not believe that, at this point, it would work the same way in humans even if we did capture the reversing process. Jellyfish are not as complicated, as far as brain function, as humans are. Interestingly enough, though, many have far more chromosomes than do humans, so technically speaking, they are more genetically complicated than we are.

Anyway, back to my point. A jellyfish can revert to its polyp stage. This is actually the second stage of a jellyfish's life (not including the eggs stage), and there are two forms after that. Humans stay relatively the same throughout their entire lives. We do not have radically different forms like jellyfish do. We also are not capable of asexual reproduction, though I know of some people who are so sick of relationships they wish they could.

Obviously, the closer an organism is to another, the easier it is to do genetic modification. Therefore, I see the use of the jellyfish being more along the lines of regenerating lost tissue, prolonging QUALITY of life, etc. rather than making us immortal. Besides, do you REALLY want to go through teething, puberty, and high school more than once.

reply to post by HarlequinRaven


Well for the human comparision check out this underground classic Parable of the Beast about parthenogenesis and third eye activation through studying other life forms:

www.amazon.com...=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1268961309&sr=1-2-spell

John Bliebtreu

www.theatlantic.com...



[edit on 18-3-2010 by drew hempel]

[edit on 18-3-2010 by drew hempel]

Originally posted by dampnickers
It strikes me that the rich people that are going to invest in this, are rich, shallow, insecure, and definitely NOT the sort we want to have living forever.

Yeah, right, what the world really needs is a bunch more poor people .. instead of rich people. No thanks, but seriously, the world would be a lot better off with only rich people hang out forever. Down with poor people.

Anyhow, I wonder, could them live forever jellyfish one day become a threat to the worlds oceans and end up killing off most all other ocean life, kind of like what the humans are doing to everything on the planet?

We really need to stop these mad scientists from trying to come up with ways to cheat death. We've already got too many people on earth, and they are already living too long. And the majority of them are poor humans too, which makes matters worse. And now I read a comment from someone that apparently doesn't think the world needs any more rich people? So, just how many poor humans on earth would be too many? 12 billion? 50 billion? Wow, imagine, 500 billion poor humans .. all living forever .. poor .. because nobody likes the rich or wants to be one of them.

I see big trouble ahead if you let these mad scientists pursue this junk. We need a law that says you must die when you are suppose too. If you try to cheat death and keep everyone alive forever, well .. tell me how that's suppose to work out? Hum? Billions and billions of humans condemned to live forever .. and all of them poor too. Sounds like hell to me. Them scientists should be smacked upside the head for even proposing "live forever humans".

Aw heck, it'd be fun to have a built-in joy buzzer like jellyfish tentacles and go on a hand-shaking spree. It would only be worth it if it was controlable and not constant however. Certain daily routines would become awkward
It'd just be something if they figured out the how and why of it, even if it wasn't translatable across species. The methods of research they will discover in the process will have cross-species potential.

starfish can live forever also, and also they can regrow limbs *anypart of their body cut off regrows for them, and also the part cut off grows into another starfish*

but it's really hard to live forever in the multitude of things that eat in the ocean, not much can survive being eaten

Beyond their distinctive shape, sea stars are famous for their ability to regenerate limbs, and in some cases, entire bodies. They accomplish this by housing most or all of their vital organs in their arms. Some require the central body to be intact to regenerate, but a few species can grow an entirely new sea star just from a portion of a severed limb.

Wow... We were just talking about this in my Philosophy of Religion class. I can't remember why; I think it had to do with the nature of identity.

This would, by the way, be an ideal method for cleaning out a planet as a front-guard for an alien invasion... dun dun dun!

There is a reason we age, and it has little to do with the fact that our genes can't do it. In truth, the most simple and natural state of evolution is to be immortal(that is, to be able to make exact copies of your cells over and over.) There are NO reasons at all why the telomeres should shorten after cell divisions, no reasons at all why our cells have not learned to make exact duplicates of themselves(or learned how to store the information to duplicate their "younger self," and duplicate those cells when necessary), after all that time.

The reason that we age is that all you have to do is think of what happens if we don't. Since we're at the top of the food chain, we cannot be killed by other animals. Therefore, I believe that the reason we age is that we had an agreement, or "signed a contract," so to speak, with shall I say, the Creator, that the physical form cannot and should not live forever.

[edit on 18-3-2010 by np6888]

reply to post by np6888


1) We are only at the top of the food chain by virtue of our minds. We can easily be killed by other animals, and frequently are.

2) A state of perfectly duplicating each cell in a body is in fact the antithesis of evolution.

3) There are reasons that our cells do not replicate perfectly; I'm no geneticist, so I couldn't explain them, but it's all about Mutations.

4) Why would we sign such a contract? What was the good for us?

Originally posted by drew hempel
reply to post by Totalstranger

 

The dude who lived to be 250 was an herb gatherer in the mountains -- he's well documented. So he lived a pure life away from civilization. In India there was Babaji -- the most famous immortal - but others live in the caves in China and India.

qigongmaster.com... is good for more information.

Omg I think I remember that babaji guy, from when I was into yogi stuff.
Wasn't he supposed to be some kind of ascended master that just hangs around earth?

reply to post by T0by


Yeah is started the Yogananda lineage -- it uses the same "microcosmic orbit" or "small universe" exercise central to the book "Taoist Yoga: Alchemy and Immortality" - here's the details on the 250 year old Chinese yoga herbalist dude:

www.martialdevelopment.com...

I think he had 17 wives.

reply to post by drew hempel


Yep it was in the Yogananda books.
So the secret of a long life is eating herbs and having many partners.
Awesome!
No wonder I still look so young.

Originally posted by drew hempel
China documented a man who died in the 1950s and was 250 years old!! His obituary was featured in the NY Times because the Chinese had the documents - a 250 old man....

www.martialdevelopment.com...

Actually, the guy might have only been 200 years old, but regardless, that's an awful long time. They do not know his exact dates of birth because, well, the birth records were pretty scanty before the 1900s.