Longevity - the very real quest for a longer, healthier life through molecular biology

In my last article, I expressed relief at the thought that if consciousness was indeed a quantum phenomenon, there might be a chance that quantum entanglement would let me actually transfer my consciousness from one "matrix" (e.g., body) to another.

I'm pretty sure now that I was wrong.

A good friend of mine (cough cough Rob Perry cough cough) pointed out that quantum entanglement is simple a matter of a state property linkage between two specific particles.  It won't magically let me create an entanglement between my current brain and a chosen destination, no matter how much I want it to.

That means that if we did have a way of downloading consciousness to a new matrix - be it a computer or organic brain - there's nothing to transport; I'm effectively just making a copy that I can then talk to.  I imagine most of the discussion will revolve around which of us is the real original, and will ultimately devolve into a deadly game of survivor.

So it appears that my best hope for immortality, after all, is then to keep my existing biological matrix functional as long as possible.

The good news is that we don't need to find a magical Fountain of Youth - there are many proven biological phenomenon that we could use to extend our lifespans.

To understand the how, first we need to know the why.

As the body ages, bad things happen.  Our cells stop dividing, or they replicate with errors.  Why do these things happen?  The first process may be a function of the second, or it may be a result of something called apoptosis - basically programmed cell death.  Many cells know that they can divide so many times, no more.  Cell division itself is vitally important to control - for example, once you're fully grown, you don't want to keep growing - so your cells need to slow down the rate of division and only divide to replace cells that are lost.  And even then the cells need to only divide to replace - if they forget how to be good neighbors and start replicating at will, well, that's cancer.

So what we want to do is to convince the cells to keep dividing in replacement mode, as existing cells die, but without do so in an uncontrolled fashion (cancer).  How do we do that?

The ends of a chromosome are
called telomeres - from med.standford.edu

We already know several things that are involved in cellular aging.  One of which is the length of the telomere, the cap on the end of the chromosome.  Because of the way cells replicate, the telomeres are necessary to keep the ends from fraying (not an exact description of the biological problem, but a good analogy to work with).  As cells age, telomeres shorten - and this may be one thing that ultimately stops cells from dividing in replacement mode.

So - we need to keep those telomeres at a good healthy length.  And we can - with an enzyme called telomerase.  This enzyme's sole job is to slap extra bits onto the existing telomeres, lengthening them so that the chromosomes don't fray too quickly.  Lots of studies suggest that increasing telomerase activity can extend lifespan - including recent studies in Mus musculus (the common mouse), which biologically is quite similar to us - mutant mice with increase telomerase activity showed a 50% increase in lifespan.  Some evidence even suggests that the antioxidant resveratrol (found in red wine and in pills sold at Trader Joe's and other such stores) stimulates telomerase activity - but the jury's out on that.  But while we're talking about them, antioxidants in general are considered to be good for cellular health and longevity, reducing the cellular damage caused by free radicals.  

In addition to telomerase and antioxidants, protecting mitochondria from oxidative damage has been shown to increase life span - by up to 30%.  And the Methuselah gene (a G-protein coupled receptor in Drosophila) has also shown a 35% increase in longevity - in Drosophila.

So there is hope that there are genetic ways we can use to extend our lifespan.  So far none of them has been demonstrated (more importantly, tested) in humans.  More importantly, none of them really address rejuvenation, or regeneration - growing new cells (not just maintaining the existing ones) to replace our elderly tissues.  After all, that's the real end goal here - not just living longer, but being youthful longer!

Regeneration has been shown in many different organisms.  Newts and axolotls can regenerate tails, even complete limbs.  Starfish can regenerate arms.  One mutant strain of mouse (Murphy Roths Large) can regenerate portions of their heart, digits, and ears is damage.  And even humans have shown limited regeneration - in fact every time you heal from a wound you're regenerating those tissues; the problem is that humans can't regenerate from more severe trauma, like newts can.  There's no reason to think that we won't be able to enhance these capabilities - after all, they're just the same cellular growth processes that our bodies already go through during maturity rom childhood - we just have to find the right genes to switch back on at the right time, convincing cells to begin dividing again.

The problem here is that not all cells can divide to produce all cell types - that's where stem cells come in.  Stem cells are essentially the progenitor cells from which all of our other cells are derived.  The ones you get from an embryo (embryonic stem cells) tend to be totipotent - they can literally give rise to any other cell.  Since there are ethical concerns with harvesting stem cells, we instead tend to use induced stem cells - cells from adult tissues which have been "converted" back into stem cells using several molecular biology tricks.  This induced stem cells tend to be pleuripotent, however - they can be differentiated into many, but not all, of the cell types found in the donor.  But that's just a technical problem - eventually we'll have the ability to use these stem cells to regrow, well, anything.  We're already using them to make whole organs and even new teeth.

And we could even move beyond biology and into the realm of nanotechnology for an aid to longevity - although Eric Drexler, in his seminal "Engines of Creation", pointed out that the first assemblers would most likely be biologically derived.  So our first steps are still likely to involve molecular biology (and we'll talk about that in more detail in a future article on CRISPR/CAS9).

For now, I'm taking my resveratrol and omega-3's and trying to stay out of trouble - you should do the same.

Quantum Consciousness

Note - a version of this article was originally posted by me on September 2011 on the original QuantumThoughts web site

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I used to have trouble getting to sleep.

Well, okay, I still sometimes have insomnia, but for completely different reasons.

You see, I used to wonder whether or not, when I awoke in the morning, I was the same person I had been when I went to sleep the previous night.

There's a discontinuity involved in sleep - the perpetual awareness of consciousness turns off for a time.  How could I know that I had not, during that interval, been replaced by an exact duplicate - with the same appearance, same memories, and (apparently) same paranoias?  It might not matter for the duplicate, but the original me might very well be gone!

Crazy as it sounds, this is a fundamental problem addressed by many philosophers, up to and including Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy.  The root of the problem is the question of what makes up the "I" that is me, and is it persistent?  Does it move with me from conscious to unconsciousness and back again?  If you have much experience with philosophy you've heard of the "Swampman" conundrum - basically, if I am replaced with an exact duplicate, with the same brain structure and (ostensibly) same memories and ways of thought, is that exact duplicate really me?  A difference that makes no difference is no difference - right?

In fact this already happens all throughout our lives - it's the "Ship of Theseus" problem all over again.  The Ship of Theseus is a ship that makes a voyage, and as bits and pieces of the ship are damaged, they are replaced.  By the end of the voyage the entire ship has been replaced.  Is it still the same ship?  Most of us would argue yes, because there was some continuity involved.  Compare that to a ship which is utterly destroyed and then is rebuilt from scratch (The Enterprise NCC-1701-A).  Nobody would argue that it's the same ship!  Each and everyone one of us is a Ship of Theseus - our cells replace themselves at a regular interval such that every "X" number of years or so there isn't a single original cell left in your body.  The sole exception to this are your neurons, which do not undergo replacement, typically.  So your thoughts are the same, your brain is the same, it's just inhabiting a different vessel every so often.  But eventually the brain will wear out and die - hold on to that thought for a few paragraphs....

At this point some of you are undoubtedly raising your hands, thinking about that religious construct referred to as a "soul".  I'm not going there.  I was raised Catholic and am now in recovery, thank you.  I truly wish there could be some magical afterlife where all the pain and suffering of life is forgotten, where all the loved ones we've lost will be eagerly awaiting us with open arms bearing gifts of incense and annointed oils (which in the case of my relatives would undoubtedly involve many varieties of delicious smoked pork products).  I also wish that Santa Claus were real, and that I had a time machine built into a Delorean DMC 12.  But I digress.

What really lies at the heart of this question is the nature of consciousness - where does it reside, and what is it comprised of?  And - if a duplicate *me* were somehow made, how could it possibly have *my* consciousness?  It might think it did, but then so would the original (unless it were somehow destroyed by my evil twin).

The basic problem of sleep-induced consciousness discontinuity is not really keeping me up at nights anymore, but it's still something I think about quite a bit because of one of my other obsessions - immortality.  The nature of consciousness matters greatly if you at all want to live beyond the lifespan of your brain.

The dream of immortality has long been a human obsession.  Only in the 21st century are we starting to see the mechanisms which might lead to the fruition of that dream.  The human body is, after all, just a machine - albeit an organic one comprised of proteins - but a machine nonetheless.  There's no reason, therefore, that the machine should ever really have to *die*.  We've had blood transfusions since 1900, and organ transplants have become more and more common - we're essentially replacing broken down parts with spares.  But with the advent of molecular biology it seems we're about to take things to the next level.  I'll talk about the mechanisms of how in next month's blog.  For now suffice it to say that even with full tissue regeneration, the one thing that we don't see as being easily repaired and maintained is the human brain.  While we have shown that nerves can be regenerated, once a specific neuron is lost or worn out, any training/information stored there is lost - and if consciousness resides in the brain, that means that sooner or later the seat of the "I" will wear out.

So if we want immortality, we need a way of moving our consciousness.

That's the crux of the matter.  What is the nature of consciousness, where does it reside?  Knowing the answers to those questions will enable us to take that last step and maintain our existence long after the original biological warranty expires.

One thing we know for certain - the brain most certainly appears to be where consciousness resides.  But that's about as far as we've gotten.  Lots of theories abound about how memories are stored in neural pathways (or even memory RNA - discredited but still cool), maintained through repeated signal transmission or some other mechanism.  We don't know for certain, however.  And that's only the storage of ideas and information - where is the central processor of the human being - the bit that gives us that constant focus, presence, and awareness?

Again there are many theories, but none have been proven.  The most interesting one I've discovered recently was actually formulated by Roger Penrose, the physicist.  He suggests that consciousness is a function of quantum waveforms formed inside the microtubules inside the brain - and while the theory is not widely accepted, there is some preliminary data that suggests that neurons do in fact have electrical functions on the quantum level.

Back to immortality - I'm still looking for a way to move my consciousness when my current brain wears out.  Whether by regenerating the neurons in the brain, or cloning the brain, or downloading your brain into a computer, there still has to be a way of moving the consciousness - otherwise all you're doing is making a copy.   And while having an exact duplicate that acts and thinks like me might be fine for my kids (sounds like a bad Disney movie, doesn't it?  "Backup Dad"), so that they'll still have a me, it won't be me - the consciousness that's writing this blog right now.  And that's what I want.

But if consciousness has a quantum component - if it's a waveform of some sort - then perhaps there is the possibility of quantum entanglement - whether naturally occurring or induced (and that's a level of physics that's far beyond me and, I suspect, anyone alive today - but hey, if I'm going to dream, why not dream big?).  Quantum entanglement - you know - spooky action at a distance?  If consciousness is a quantum waveform, then maybe - just maybe - it'll follow structure and reside in any sympathetic matrix similar enough to the one it "remembers", whether physical (neuronal) or algorithmic (computer).  That means cloned brains or computers could in fact serve as repositories of me - not just a duplicate, a copy, but the me that is currently extant.

And maybe we can take it further than that - maybe if consciousness is a quantum waveform, we don't need a physical container at all - maybe that waveform can be imprinted on the underlying matrix of the universe itself - a transcendence that many religions have promised without providing a mechanism that could actually be demonstrated or comprehended.

I guess I was wrong earlier - maybe I really am talking about the soul.  But not the soul in the traditional Western religious sense; think more soul in the Buddhist sense, and it's something that might be comprehensible in a scientific way, something we can manipulate and preserve.

I suspect that cloned brains or computer downloads are a long way away.  But that's okay - the first step is to preserve the existing body as long as possible; if we can do that, it'll give us plenty of time to figure out the rest.

More on that next month.

The Ever-Changing Future

Note - a version of this article was originally posted by me on August 2011 on the original QuantumThoughts web site

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"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel."  

Bonus points if you recognized the quote; it's from the classic, seminal cyberpunk novel, "Neuromancer" by William Gibson.  Back in 1980 it conjured up a vision of a static-filled TV-screen, suggesting that the future which Gibson's world occupied was grim and bleak and dystopian.

It was another sci-fi author, Robert J. Sawyer (in "WWW: Wake") who pointed out that today it doesn't have quite the same meaning - a modern HD TV, when tuned to a channel that is not active, is "blue like the sky".  The future, it appears, isn't as it was going to be ("wioll haven be" if you're a Douglas Adams fan).

Take it back even further - let's look at the future as envisoned by Jules Verne (who was probably considered a fantasy writer in his day, rather than a science fiction writer).  He envisioned such fantastical things as ships that could travel under the surface of the water ("20,000 Leagues Under the Sea"), voyages to the moon ("From The Earth to the Moon").  Verne wrote these in the 1860's, long before we could actually undertake such feats.

When a science-fiction writer sets a story in a future, they are often creating a postulated future by extrapolating from the current state of the world.  Sometimes they are very successful - Verne, for example - and sometimes they aren't.  Why?  Well, extrapolating a future from the current state of the world is a dangerous business.  Reality doesn't always cooperate - the unexpected can throw the best laid plans of sci-fi writers completely awry.

You see, Verne had it easy.  The rate of human progress was, well, slower back then.  Predicting improvements in transportation was a no-brainer.  Steam was King, Scientific Progress was inevitable - jitneys and trains and trolleys would get smaller, faster, cheaper, etc. etc. etc.

But the rate of that progress is ever-increasing.  Hugo Gernsback was perhaps the most obvious example of a prognosticator who didn't quite make the boat.

For those of you who don't know, Hugo (who was actually a contemporary of Verne, being born two decades before Verne's death) is considered the "Father of Science Fiction".  Not because of his writing, but because he promoted Science Fiction - by founding one of the most famous magazines of the 20th century, "Amazing Stories".  He helped get science fiction published and read and popularized - "Amazing Stories" was published for 80 years!  The Hugo Award, in fact, is named in honor of the esteemed Mr. Gernsback.

"Amazing Stories" was full of the future - the future as envisioned in the early decades of the 20th century.  It was full of flying cars, family spaceships, highways in the sky - looking a lot like Fritz Lang's Metropolis, the early 20th century thought the future would be a straight-forward extrapolation of the existing trends.

Reality intruded.  Computers rapidly went from large rooms full of vacuum tubes to things you could put on your desk - and it changed the way we envisioned the future.  Suddenly it was "obvious" that transporation's heyday was over; the next revolution would be in information.  This spawned the Cyberpunk genre (William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Neal Stephenson, Rudy Rucker, dozens more) - and moved the future to a different place.

Cyberpunk was largely grim and bleak, because the world had become darker since the 1930's.  The World Wars, the Cold War, the Vietnam War, the rise of the corporation and the franchise, and the transformation of the middle class into a sort of "virtual serfdom" were the new baseline that science fiction used to extrapolate into this new future - and it was not pretty (although Neal Stephenson at least made "Snow Crash" one hell of a fun ride).  Add to the mix the nanotech (or nanopunk) revolution - Greg Bear's "Blood Music", Kathleen Ann Goonan's "Queen City Jazz", and all the other biological-revolution predictions of Grey Goo or the drastic reshaping of humans and human society - and it just gets strange.

The rate of change itself is changing - and this has led many to postulate a "technological singularity", a point in time beyond which we cannot see what will happen next, because we will no longer be causing the changes.  Whether we create Artificial Intelligence or it arises as an Emergent phenomenon derived from the interconnected computing power of the internet, many seem convinced it will happen, and soon - many say by 2040.

The idea of machines taking over is just part of the current obsession we have with apocalypse.  Whether it's zombies or some other plague, an ecological disaster, or Terminators (Borg, Berserkers, we've seen them before), plenty of today's possible futures seem to involve the catastrophic demise of humanity.  Why?  Maybe we just need to have a common foe (The Soviet Union is gone, but we could still have an alien invasion - when Gliese-581d receives our directed radio message in 19 years and a jumpgate opens in Earth orbit, for example).  Maybe we're feeling the pressures of economy and overcrowding and diminishing resources.

I'm not a psychologist, and if you want more about the Apocalypse I can't help you - I'm just trying to finally get to my point here, which is that the Future is a moving target - our visions of the future are always changing, and I believe that - here's the point now - we get to choose!

Science Fiction is like lucid dreaming - we project our hopes, fears, and dreams into a vision of possible futures.  And the artists who create those futures, the science fiction writers, they are planting memes - viral ideas, which if they take hold in our collection consciousness, can be made form.  Gibson dreamed up Cyberspace after watching his kids play video games on an original Nintendo NES (he actually wrote "Neuromancer" on a typewriter, not on a computer).  It was a compelling enough vision that we started applying visual interfaces over what had previously been a simple text and file transfer system (Darpanet, which evolved into the Internet).  I was in graduate school in the 1990's, and I remember quite clearly when I first saw a "Gopher" interface, let alone "NCSA Mosaic", Marc Andreesssen's invention and the first true web browser that let users view words and images simultaneously.  Not the fully-immersive three-dimensional consensual hallucination Gibson envisioned (World of Warcraft comes a bit closer), but certainly a significant step in that direction.

Anyway, the point - science fiction describes possible futures.  When the future is compelling enough, either by virtue of memic infection of the majority of us, or at least those of us with the ability to enact a change, we make it happen.

President John Fitzgerald Kennedy did much of the same thing in 1961.  He chose our future, infected a nation with the vision of making a sci-fi dream a reality, and in less than a decade it happened.

So - our dreams create reality.  In most of our lifetimes it's been through acts of engineering (The World Wide Web from Gibson's Cyberspace, Apple iPads from the Star Trek: The Next Generation P.A.D.D., etc.).  But some philosophers believe that the very structure of reality can be shaped by our minds - and if consciousness really derives from quantum structures in the brain, maybe we can choose which of the many different possible futures comes to pass.

More on quantum consciousness next month….