Cellular Senescence Quotes

Aging is basically the build-up of error: error at the genetic level, error at the cellular level. Cells normally repair themselves; that's why you heal when you get a cut. But even the mechanism of repair eventually falls apart.

If you asked me what caused aging, I would say free radicals and molecules, which spontaneously shift and form and cause damage in all our cells and genes. The body usually repairs and replaces the damage in these genes. But as you get older, the aging clock turns down those defenses.

Ageing is, simply and clearly, the accumulation of damage in the body. That's all that ageing is.

Biological age is the key component of the aging process.

What makes me so certain that the natural human lifespan is far in excess of the actual one is this. Among all my autopsies (and I have performed over 1000), I have never seen a person who died of old age. In fact, I do not think that anyone has ever died of old age yet. We invariably die because one vital part has worn out too early in proportion to the rest of the body.

But there is nothing in biology yet found that indicates the inevitability of death.

For healthy adult people, the really big thing we can foresee are ways of intervening in the ageing process, either by slowing or reversing it.

The number of cells in our bodies is defined by an equilibrium of opposing forces: mitosis adds cells, while programmed cell death removes them. Just as too much cell division can lead to a pathological increase in cell number, so can too little cell death.

Because scientists know that all human beings do not age at the same rate, biological age is measured by how well one's physiological systems are functioning.

We know that people who are born with shorter telomeres than normal also have a shorter lifespan. We know that shorter telomeres can cause a shorter lifespan.

If you can slow the biological process of aging, even a minor slowdown in the rate at which we age yields improvements in virtually every condition of frailty and disability and mortality that we see at later ages.

Most people think that aging is irreversible and we know that there are mechanisms even in the human machinery that allow for the reversal of aging, through correction of diet, through anti-oxidants, through removal of toxins from the body, through exercise, through yoga and breathing techniques, and through meditation.

Ageing is so many different things, and cells being able to self-renew is part of the picture but not all of it.

Telomeres are the ends of our chromosomes that control how long we live. As telomeres become shorter, then cells age and die more quickly. In simple terms, as your telomeres get shorter, your life gets shorter.

You can open up a centenarian's brain, and you'll see some areas that look like that of a 50-year-old or of a 110-year-old. You can have variation in the basic process of aging, called senescence, in different parts of the same body.

When you bring telomerase RNA levels down by using a mechanism that targets the RNA for destruction, the cells which were running on very high telomerase levels are now running on a lean diet of telomerase.

Aging is not one process. It's many different things going on that cause us to age. I have a program that at least slows down each of these different processes.

Aging is mostly the failure to repair.

Ageing is very rare. We only see it in humans and laboratory animals and in zoo animals and in our pets. Basically, organisms that are protected from the external world. Once you create that protection, you live long enough to see ageing.

A short telomere represents a persistent and non-repairable damage to the cells, which is able to prevent their division or regeneration.

I think science has begun to demonstrate that aging is a disease. If it is, it can be cured.

We see that mice that undergo caloric restriction show a lower telomere shortening rate than those fed with a normal diet. These mice therefore have longer telomeres as adults, as well as lower rates of chromosome anomalies.

I thought that tackling aging and the mechanisms that promote life would be worth figuring out. I wanted to learn why it is that some people are healthier than others and why some people live to 110 and others only to 60 or 70.

What is it that keeps you so interested in the telomere? It's so intricate and complicated, and you want to know how it works.

It is unlikely that changes in telomeres are influencing the lifespan of the worm. That is because telomeres only shorten when cells divide. Most of the cells of the worm stop dividing when the worm becomes an adult.