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Asked by to Anna, Elaine, Fiona, Kevin, Darren on 23 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
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Kevin O'Dell answered on 23 Jun 2014:
Really good, and very topical question. There have been a few misleading headlines in the press about this today!
From a biological point of view, nothing can live forever, even lobsters. However, they do seem to have evolved a way of protecting themselves against a key cause of ageing.
One of the key aspects of ageing is replicating chromosomes. The problem is that it’s really difficult to replicate the ends of chromosomes (the telomeres), so chromosomes tend to get shorter with every cell division, and eventually end up losing a gene near the end of a chromosome that is important. These cells then die.
Lobsters seem to have found a way to solve this problem, so researchers are interested in how they do that as it appears to slow down their ageing process as they can keep on replicating their cells to produce new healthy cells (we can only do this 60-100 times). If we can understand how it happens in lobsters, then we can try and develop drugs that will do the same thing in humans.
But is that a good idea?!
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Anna Bramwell-Dicks answered on 23 Jun 2014:
Kevin has covered this really well already.
But, after reading your question I now have this song -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Jtpf8N5IDE&feature=kp stuck in my head.
Comments
animallmad commented on :
no because evrything has to die at some point how cn they live for ever when we eat them