Miraculous nature: These are creatures that make you believe in immortality!

Most creatures gradually age and die. But we have more fortunate creatures: It seems they know how to escape the fateful cycle.

Just like every immortal character still complains: to live long to see it as a curse, not a blessing, when an immortal will see everything around him gradually decaying, gradually dying with time. time. People can argue for themselves, but animals should not be afraid of them: there are animals that are theoretically immortal, even in the category of "ever-young".

We are talking about the "biological immortality" aspect, but biologists don't like the term "immortal" at all.

Professor Bosch said no wrong."Biologically immortal" forms of life can completely die, they can be eaten, get sick and die or die from sudden changes in their living environment. But unlike humans, life forms that are being talked about rarely die of advanced age.

To put it more simply: biologically immortal can die, but they don't seem to age .

The evergreen species of the pine family, named bristlecone pine, is the first example. Some individuals live in North America for a long time, it began to grow 5,000 years ago, back then people were still fighting with spears. Its appearance makes us guess that it has lived for a few millennia.

The old look can make people think that this is a dead tree, but when studying carefully, bristlecone pine brings a completely different story.

The 2001 study compared the plant's pollen and seeds for 4,700 years, discovering that they have not changed much. The tissue living in the tree still acts as its youthful period. The shaggy, old appearance hides the intense vitality of every cell inside: the plant is as young as 5,000 years ago.

Nobody knows how the bristlone pine tree can do that, but the way the plants are biologically immortal has not been well studied.

"There is a sudden phenomenon, there will be bad things , " Thomas said. "But just as the bacterial world exists, non-mutant cells work more efficiently than damaged cells."

Researcher Lieven De Veylder at Ghent University in Belgium proposed another possibility. He thought that the key factor lies in the amount of cells in meristem, named "passive center". Here, cell division phenomenon takes place more slowly than usual, more likely to slow the cell division process in meristem.

In 2011, De Veylder and his team found a protein that could potentially control "passive centers" , called Arabidopsis . Similar proteins may be what makes the organism live for thousands of years, but not all plants are so lucky. Because other creatures have a fast pace of life.

Because the tree stands in place, it is clear that its life span cannot be as fast as the larval animals, both in terms of movement speed and cell division rate. That is probably the reason why animals live only a few hundred years before they die. There is still a special case: the animals live in groups, into individual large clusters such as corals that can live up to 4,000 years.

The son named Ming (the son named Ming, not the boy named Minh) is the longest living individual ever recorded. When scientists found Ming off the Icelandic coast, it was determined to be 507 years old. It is likely that older boys die because they are brought back to study by scientists. It must also be rethought: if you don't catch it, you won't know how long a single animal can live.

Ming is dead, but it is most likely a " biologically immortal" creature. In animal cells in general, oxygen-containing molecules will interact with the membrane, creating very small molecules that can cause cell damage. But research in 2012 showed that sea oyster cells have a special membrane, preventing all the above lesions.

It must be said, in particular, that Ming is the animal with the highest possible life span. Since it is a mollusk, biologists can count its age on the mussel shell, much like the number of trees of the wood to count the age.

These include Hydra , a soft-bodied animal like jellyfish. Small animals often do not live long, but there have been cases where a biologist kept the Hydra in the laboratory for up to four years. So it's too long for an animal that is only 15mm long. And yet, during the 4 years in the tank, the Hydra did not age at all, the cells were still young as the day of the cot.

It's too hard to measure how long a Hydra can live. It may be several years before he died but it could be 10,000 years. Later research has again shown that biological immortality is related to stem cells.

Hydra has a very dense set of stem cells in tiny body volumes. So much that when an accident occurs, the Hydra's body can create new parts instead. That's why its name is Hydra: the legendary hydra dragon can regrow its head after being cut.

Self-replication also not only makes the Hydra almost immune to external damage, it's also the way Hydra reproduces. It does not multiply by mating, but creates a tiny copy of itself. From three separate stem cells, it forms all the living tissue necessary for a newly developed Hydra creature. The three stem cells all have one thing in common: the FoxO protein . Bosch researcher believes that FoxO is the key to "immortality".

The way FoxO makes Hydra young and old is still not researched. But experts say FoxO seems to be the general anti-aging mechanism of the animal world. People also have several versions of FoxO, often found in over 100-year-old individuals. Must be corrected: non-immortal 100-year-old fish are similar to Hydra.

The "no immortal like Hydra" cluster can be applied to another creature, which is a jellyfish . That's because it's immortal.

To understand why jellyfish can be immortal, learn about the life cycle of a jellyfish.

When the jellyfish and eggs combine, they form a small larva. The middle is not simply developed into a mature jellyfish, but itself falls into a hard surface, turning into a soft tissue structure called "tubular polyps - a single-celled polyp".

Most reproductive polyps are like Hydra (Hydra itself is also a polyp): replicate yourself. But in certain species, polyps develop in a different way. They form jellyfish or males or females, swim freely in the water, create eggs and sperm, start a new life cycle.

Most jellyfish can turn their bodies backwards during their lifetimes, losing this ability only when they reach the maturity and fertility stage. This is the general law of most jellyfish.

Another immortal mechanism falls into a mysterious darkness. It was also at the jellyfish that was "strange", unlike any other animal from reproduction to immortality, so it was so strange. It is possible that "fertility" and "immortality" are related to each other. If it is true that stem cells are the key to biological immortality, the organisms that contain large amounts of stem cells to replicate themselves, reproduce themselves will often be immortal.

But if that's the case, there will be one side left: every living organism based on mating to reproduce and maintain the race will not be immortal."It can be argued that the creation of eggs and sperm is very energy intensive, causing organisms to die early," said Bosch researcher.

But there is another side of the claim, for example, the American lobster .

Most animals stop growing when they are of reproductive age, but American lobsters are not. Adults can regenerate themselves when an accident occurs and lose part of their body. These two things, "non-stop development" and "self-regeneration" show that American lobsters have amazing resilience, even when they are older. There are individuals caught back at the age of 140.

The fact that lobster can survive is probably because their DNA works differently. At the end of the lobster chromosome in the US there is a special part called telomere, which protects DNA. Normally, when cell division takes place and the chromosome is doubled, telomeres will be slightly shortened because cell division cannot stretch the length of the chromosome.

Conclusion: telomere is short, life cycle will be short.

The American lobster does not agree with what nature bestows on it, in it it has a telomere-long enzyme called telomerase. Research in 1998 showed that all American lobster organs have telomerase, which makes the cells younger.

Telomeres seem to be the perfect way for an organism to achieve immortality. But we have too little evidence that other organisms have the same mechanism, not found in immortal plants or low-level animals like jellyfish. Mr. Bosch said that perhaps telomeres only exist in high-level animals.

Many mammals contain telomerase - a telomere-lengthening enzyme. In humans, they exist in HeLA cells : the first "immortal" cell ever discovered.

This is not good news. HeLa got its name because they were taken from the body of Henrientta Lacks, she died of cervical cancer in 1951. The enzyme telomerase allowed the tumor to thrive and spread, perhaps this is why This particular enzyme only exists in some mammals. HeLa cancer cells are potentially immortal, but it has robbed Henrietta Lacks of life.

Cancer cells are not the only type of immortal cells present in the human body. The germ cell chain is also not aging. These are the cells that make eggs and sperm, they must be able to not grow old so that babies are born without getting old before their age.

What if the newborn is not as young as they should be? We have Dolly sheep is the clearest proof.

Dolly is cloned from a mammary cell, without a protective mechanism from aging so Dolly was born before age. Telomere in Dolly sheep has just been born short, so it is much older than "peers" much. Dolly had severe lung disease, scientists soon gave him a rest.

"The immortal way of living like us is like that, we have a mechanism to reverse the age of cells," said researcher Howard Thomas. There is something we don't know how to turn. Telomerase enzymes are likely to be an important factor, but not yet a final assertion. We do not know how to fight aging, improve old people.

Immortality is still a burden that individuals have to suffer. In legend, the prince Tithonus Troy is so handsome that he seduces the goddess Eos. Eos asked Zeus to give Tithonus immortality to the two - a spirit of a naked - forever together.

The "generous" Zeus bestowed on Tithonus immortality, but Tithonus could still grow old. Over the years, the handsome prince gradually lost his appearance and was no longer lucid. Eos quickly got bored of having to hang out with an old man, who confined him to the prince forever.

What lesson left us with? Perhaps taking advantage of all the moments of the youth we currently have. Young people!