Immortal MIcrobes !

Do you sometimes wish that you could stay young forever? I know I do. But aging is a part of life and is inevitable. But this is not that case of a common species of yeast microbe, which has actually evolved to stay young. Researchers from the University of Bristol and Max Planck Institute have discovered this microbe that stays forever young by rejuvenating every time it reproduces. The team showed that the yeast microbe called S. pombe is immune to aging when it is reproducing under favorable growth conditions. The way this works is by the yeast has to keep dividing fast enough, but also there are mechanisms in place that ensure that one half gets older and defective cell material, while the other half gets newly formed cell material which keeps it young. This is just like in humans, in a sense, that they produce offspring that is younger than the parent; but its different than in other microbes that split into two pretty equal halves. This all works perfectly under the right conditions, but the researchers also wanted to see if this still applied when the conditions were not so favorable. So the research team exposed the S. pombe to heat, ultraviolet radiation, and damaging chemicals, which affected the microbe growth so it could no longer stay young, and once exposed to these conditions the yeast cells began splitting into a younger and older half just like other cells. The researchers also stated that these findings could “potentially serve as a model of certain non-aging types of cells in humans”. It is amazing to learn that even microscopic organisms evolved powerful strategies to survive. Although this article was interesting it did not go into how exactly this could serve as a model of non-aging types of cells in humans. That left me wondering, how exactly cans this discovery help humans.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/09/130912132005.htm

http://images.sciencedaily.com/2013/09/130912132005-large.jpg