And wasn't it some medical breakthrough that turned most everyone into vampires in I Am Legend? Beware...Originally Posted by JTQ
And wasn't it some medical breakthrough that turned most everyone into vampires in I Am Legend? Beware...
Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits - Mark Twain
Tact is the knack of making a point without making an enemy / Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Pretty much was my first thought, "Sounds cool. Will it come with low-dose radiation therapy for the cancer?"
It would be cool if things like this worked, but many gene regulatory mechanisms have multiple genes they regulate for. It isn't even just a matter of turning on or off a switch, it's what turning on that switch does downstream. I love me some developmental biology and some "mad scientist" type stuff. Heck my last paper has a bunch of developmental biology in it. But for most of the last 100 years of experimental developmental biology it has basically been, "If we knock this out. What happens?" followed by, "If we plug this type of tissue in, what happens?" - Because experimental organisms are rarely allowed to run through full lifecycles, the long-term effects of work like this are still poorly understood.
One thing that the "cell clock" mechanism they described could be useful for though is targeted medications. If you can trace and tag cell types based on their ages and locations, you may be able to build those types of tracers and tag readers into your medications, delivering meds to the primary source of the pain, as opposed to say...simply circumventing the pain signals being registered by the brain, by speeding up (or slowing down, various based on the med) how they are read. I know many folks are working on target-identifying medications these days, this could provide another avenue for that. That would be very cool.
As an aside, targeted medications are the way of the future. It could be the best way to eliminate the opioid dependence problem in our country too. By more effectively managing pain, opioids will be less useful as a general analgesic and could basically go away.
A slight non-sequitur, but I've got a zombie novel I've been writing, where the general premise behind the "zombie virus" is basically an infection that short cycles aspects of cell apoptosis (programmed cell death). Cells end up building up, because none die off. The body needs to consume extra energy to manage the increased cells, so fat, then high protein tissues (like BRAINSSSSSS...) are consumed by the body. Leaving only moderate amounts of basic nervous system function in place, once the body ravages through for those high protein sources. All the person knows is...they're hungry and they have no broader sense of self or identity.
I already wrote that one and made a million dollars. Find another topic.
Small article in a nothing journal. Wouldn't bet the farm.
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