Signs of Aging, Even in the Embryo

I read the article, “Signs of Aging, Even in the Embryo”. In 1961 biologists, Leonard Hayflick and Paul Moorehead discovered that old age is built into our cells. This discovery contradicted the previous common belief that a healthy human cell would multiply forever. This article explains a recent validation to this previous discovery. Dr. Hayflick and Dr. Moorehead reared fetal human cells and found that begging at the fetal stage, cells stop growing in the human body. Cells that stop growing this way came to be known as senescent. The article states, “Given all this research, the last place you would expect to find senescent cells would be at the very start of life. But now three teams of scientists are reporting doing just that. For the first time, they have found senescent cells in embryos, and they have offered evidence that senescence is crucial to proper development.” Essentially they discovered that for life to get off on a good start, you need a splash of old age (senescent cells). Biologists also discovered that senescent cells are important to life for other reasons. They found that, “Besides stopping their growth, scientists found, senescent cells also secrete a cocktail of chemicals. The chemicals they release can create chronic inflammation. They also attract certain immune cells, which seek out the senescent cells and kill them.” This behavior is good for our health because it keeps cells from becoming cancerous by stopping the cells from uncontrollable division. Moreover, the biologists found that senescent cells are crucial for embryonic development because the chemicals they release act as signals for cells to develop into different tissues, to create a complete and functional body.

The material covered in this article affects humanity greatly. The discovery of the benefits of these senescent cells may be able to help find a cure to cancer. If scientists study the behavior of these cells they may be on a track towards a cure to cancer and therefore many lives all over the world could be saved. Also, this article relates to our bio class. We are currently learning about reproduction and embryonic development so this article directly correlates. It is interesting to learn a little bit more about embryonic development from this article, because they would not be something that would be covered in class. However, it is very interesting.

Overall, I found this article to be very interesting. I enjoyed learning about these cells because I had not heard about them before. Previously I had thought cells would always keep growing and multiplying, so I was very intrigued to read more about these cells that stop growing. Although this article was interesting, I think it would have been more interesting if it covered more about the negative affects of these cells rather than mostly positive. Also, the article wasn't very clear at points which made it difficult to understand.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/21/science/signs-of-aging-even-in-the-embryo.html?ref=science&_r=0