• Question: Please may I know y there is no scientific evidence up to this very age what causes oldage when scientist say the cell dont grow old

    Asked by to Amelia, Izzy, Sarah on 20 Mar 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Isabel Webb

      Isabel Webb answered on 20 Mar 2014:

      Cells are continously dividing and creating new cells, and then old cells are recycled to recover any useful chemicals.
      When cells divide they must copy all their DNA completely. At the end of DNA are things called telomeres. Telomeres are long strands of gobbledegook DNA that protect the end of the DNA strands. Everytime you copy the DNA you lose a tiny bit of the telomeres. If you lose all of the telomere, you will start losing pieces of useful DNA from your genes. If you lose these pieces of DNA you may end up losing something important, leading to loss of something – like losing the colour in your hair, or strength in your skin making it sag. If this happens somewhere like the brain it could lead to memory problems.

      We don’t understand these telomeres very well yet, but there is a lot of important research going into it.

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