Breakthrough discovery in plants’ DNA may lead to slowing the aging process in humans, Sandee LaMotte, CNN, November 18, 2019
Topics: Biology, Civics, Civil Rights, Entropy, History, Philosophy
My last post on this site was on my birthday this summer.
I have been commuting to and from work in Durham during the government shutdown (a little over two hours round trip in good traffic), which surpassed the previous shutdown during his last administration as the longest on record.
I know of government employees who took the DRP (Deferred Resignation Program), especially those who had over 35 years of employment. I saw some that were furloughed (despite the theatrical bluster and rhetoric, everyone who came back received all the money they were owed the day they returned to work). I know three female colleagues, young, bright scientists, PhDs, who quit the Agency. Over 90% of the Agency, BEFORE the shutdown, was over the age of 35, and I don’t think other government agencies are too far off that demographic. It will take us a generation, or more, to recover from this.
Maybe that was the point of it, insane as that sounds. DOGE, by future historians (if we’re not in the throes of a new Dark Ages), will be a byword and a curse.
Since Newt Gingrich introduced this blood sport into the political lexicon, every shutdown has been since him, Dennis Hastert (who turned out to be a pedophile – who knew?), John Boehner, Paul Ryan, and the current useless Capitol furniture, Mike Johnson, EVERY last one has been when Republicans held the Speaker’s gavel. But I digress.
I haven’t been posting because of my travels. I get up at 4:00 am, and leave for Durham at a quarter till 5:00. I work out and get on with my day. I feel weathered.
I heard that said in an interview by Nicole Hannah-Jones, author of “The 1619 Project,” in interviews I’ve seen her in on YouTube. She described that as affecting African Americans in health disparities, especially during the COVID pandemic.
There is some precedence for this observation.
Two medical professionals, Dr. Elizabeth H. Blackburn and Dr. Carol W. Greider, shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine with Dr. Jack W. Szostak in 2009 “for the discovery of how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase.”
The long, thread-like DNA molecules that carry our genes are packed into chromosomes, the telomeres being the caps on their ends. Elizabeth Blackburn and Jack Szostak discovered that a unique DNA sequence in the telomeres protects the chromosomes from degradation. Carol Greider and Elizabeth Blackburn identified telomerase, the enzyme that makes telomere DNA. These discoveries explained how the ends of the chromosomes are protected by the telomeres and that they are built by telomerase.
If the telomeres are shortened, cells age. Conversely, if telomerase activity is high, telomere length is maintained, and cellular senescence is delayed.
Source: http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2009/
The National Institute of Health found telomeres profoundly shortened in African Americans, corresponding to shorter life expectancies.
“Weathering” and cellular Entropy by another name.
Safe travels.
Physics and Nano 