Immortality

Would you like to live forever? It is one of the questions that humans have asked ourselves for centuries. Although there is no right or wrong answer, it would be more interesting to ask a Greenland shark, a mountain, the Earth, the Sun, the Milky Way. Or maybe ask the Universe: “Is it really that incredible to turn 13 billion years old? By the way, I don’t think I’ll be able to attend your 14 billionth birthday.”

Whatever the answer, there are organisms on Earth that do not age. The Hydra Vulgaris It is an aquatic being that measures between 10-33mm, and although it can die, it always remains young. How do we know? It all started in 1998 when the then doctoral student Daniel Martínez from the State University of New York observed that over 4 years the hydra did not seem to age biologically, therefore he had to write in his thesis: hydra “may be potentially immortal.” As a scientist it is not convenient to make these kinds of statements, that is why he extended his research and after 12 years the hydra She was still alive, with no signs of aging. So now it is worth asking what kind of anti-aging treatment you use, how much it costs and when we can make an appointment with your dermatologist.

Unfortunately we cannot interview them yet, but what we do know is the following. First of all, hydras reproduce sexually and asexually, this means that they can clone themselves. Although this is impressive enough, it is also known that most of its cells are stem cells. Therefore, they have the ability to regenerate very quickly. Data we have thanks to the Doctor in Cellular and Molecular Biology Celina Juliano from the University of California.

Some might complain to me now that the Hydra She is very small, so it is easy for her to live so long and stay young. To these people I would like to introduce the Greenland shark which can weigh 900 kilograms, measure approximately 7 meters and live between 400 and 500 years. As additional information, his childhood and adolescence last 150 years. Its longevity lies in the ability to repair its DNA. According to Arne Sahm, a computational biologist at Ruhr-University Bochum in Germany, and his colleagues have observed that the genetic code of these animals is very long and also has duplicated genes. Who needs to take their car to the dealership when they have auto parts that they put themselves at home.

The last animal that I would like to present in this anti-aging contest is: the mole rat. A rodent native to Africa that when it dies retains its body almost the same as when it was young. Their secret to eternal beauty: breathing very slowly, having low body temperature and having cells resistant to oxygen deprivation, among other things. Unfortunately, unlike the Greenland shark, this rodent only lives 30 years. As the popular saying goes: beauty costs. In addition to keeping its body young, there is something else interesting about this rat, its ability to protect itself against cancer. When a tumor is forming, what happens is that the cells begin to reproduce at an accelerated rate, finally cancer appears. In the case of mole rats, when this happens cell growth stops. The compound that activates this anti-cancer cascade is hyaluronic acid. An ingredient that is curiously very common in beauty and anti-aging products.

As we have seen, immortality is something very relative, it seems that life runs out little by little when the physical body deteriorates, but these living beings have shown us that despite being finite, their cells behave as if they would last forever. always. For many, Marilyn Monroe will be eternally beautiful, despite having died when she was only 36 years old.