The Fountain of Youth
In this rabbit hole, we learn why people in the future will live for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Modern gene editing is so precise that some people already have DNA that they didn’t get from their parents. 🧬🪄
This story is part two of Human Source Code. In part one, we learned about the software inside our DNA:
Our DNA software is mirrored for redundancy and duplicated for performance. We can make proteins from either of our parents at any time.
Our DNA software is stored in chromosomes, which use physical encryption to protect our source code. Chromosomes only unspool their “DNA tape” wherever it needs to be read.
Our DNA software is packaged into genes that also work in bacteria, plants, animals, and maybe even aliens (according to a Stanford professor on the shortlist for a Nobel Prize).
At the end of part one, we learned how some of our genes have never mutated. EVER. If you believe in Darwinian Evolution, you may be surprised to learn that some genes (like histones H3 and H4) have a 0.00% mutation rate per 1,000 million years across all life forms. Now in part two, we will see the opposite is also true. Other segments of our DNA mutate constantly throughout our lifetimes to better fit us into our various environments.
Computer programmers have a similar process for updating software while it’s running called Runtime Patching. There are so many things that can go wrong when runtime patching that programmers generally avoid it at all costs. If a single bit gets corrupted, it can sometimes crash the entire machine. Software is that brittle and as we will see—so is our DNA.
If this story gets too 🤓:
Skip down here to learn how aging and cancer work.
Skip down here to learn why future generations will live forever.
Skip down here to learn how scientists edit DNA in living people.
Runtime Patching DNA
There are several ways our DNA modifies itself during our lifetime. The simplest method is called Horizontal Gene Transfer (HGT). HGT means our DNA not only acquires genes from our parents (vertically), but DNA can also download genes from any foreign invader it encounters. Bet you didn’t learn that in Biology class.
Horizontal Gene Transfer is the most prolific source of mutation in bacteria. When a larger bacteria eats a smaller bacteria, it acquires all the software in the victim’s nucleus. This is another reason Darwinian Evolution doesn’t make sense to me. If bacteria mutate aggressively while they are alive, and they have the shortest lifespans to increase their rate of natural selection, why are they at the bottom of the evolutionary hierarchy?
@evolutionists: E. coli bacteria reproduce every 20 mins. Why haven’t they evolved into anything new in the last million generations (38 years)?
HGT isn’t as common in animals, but scientists have documented bacteria-to-bacteria HGT, bacteria-to-animal HGT, and animal-to-animal HGT. To learn more, check out Horizontal gene transfer between bacteria and animals.
Our DNA’s ability to download new genes within our lifetime is remarkable, but it creates a vulnerability in our software. Roughly 1% of our genome is actually viruses, called Human Endogenous Retroviruses (HERV). Retroviruses are called “retro” because they use a Reverse Transcriptase protein to insert their source code into another organism’s DNA, just like a computer worm.
This is kinda gross, but some of them may not be infections. Check out this quote from the National Institute of Health.
Over 20 HERV families have been identified during the past two decades. Although many are defective through the accumulation of mutations, deletions, and termination signals within coding sequences, a limited number of HERVs have the potential to produce viral products and, indeed, to produce viral-like particles.
These HERV “code snippets” with deletions and termination signals within coding sequences is exactly how I would describe Antivirus Software. For example, if we look at the source code for Norton Antivirus, we will see code snippets from the StuxNet computer virus, but that doesn’t mean Norton is infected with StuxNet. Norton retains bits and pieces of the StuxNet source code so that it can quickly kill the virus on sight in the future. 👀🔪
The COVID-19 vaccine from Moderna works the exact same way. Their mRNA platform introduces bits and pieces of the COVID-19 protein spike to our immune systems without the rest of the virus. Our “antivirus software” trains on that data, so that it can quickly kill the virus on sight in the future. 👀🔪
This is where the line between biology and computer science really begins to blur. When COVID-19 was first sequenced, the geneticists from the World Health Organization sent the sequence to Moderna in Microsoft Word. I received the Moderna vaccination. So that means somewhere inside of me is DNA source code that was originally copy-pasted from an email.
Error Correcting Memory
So far, we have seen how our DNA mutates from viral attacks and horizontal gene transfers, but it also mutates by accident. Occasionally, extra nucleotides get inserted into our DNA during replication, which is called “strand slippage”. To prevent these mistakes from becoming permanent, our DNA software uses a process known as Mismatch Repair (MMR) to fix the problem. Here is a diagram from Khan Academy to explain how MMR works.
Kudos to Khan Academy for making this process look simple, because the MMR system is incredibly sophisticated. It has to be because—our very lives depend on it. Every minute within the human body, 10 million cells individually replicate 3 billion letters of DNA. If even just 1 of those 30 quadrillion letters is wrong, it causes us to age.
Each time a cell makes a copying error, its daughter cell loses some ability, which is called Cell Senescence. When enough of these replication errors accumulate, they cause Cancer. This is another reason why Darwinian Evolution doesn’t make sense to me—our DNA is disintegrating, not integrating.
@christians: The genetic bottleneck after the global flood caused our mutations to exponentially increase, which caused our lifespans to exponentially decrease.
If we plot the lifespans of people in the Old Testament on a graph, each data point fits a biological decay curve with an R-squared of 0.9537, meaning 95% of the datapoints fit the curve. If the Bible was made up, those ancient scribes had a next level understanding of logarithms. Here is a video if you want to learn more about our biological decay. (7 mins)
The MMR system is critical to preventing all forms of cancer. Check out this quote published in Cell Research.
MMR corrects DNA mismatches generated during DNA replication, thereby preventing mutations from becoming permanent in dividing cells. Because MMR reduces the number of replication-associated errors, defects in MMR increase the spontaneous mutation rate. Inactivation of MMR in human cells is associated with hereditary and sporadic human cancers, and the MMR system is required for cell cycle arrest and/or programmed cell death in response to certain types of DNA damage. Thus, MMR plays a role in the DNA damage response pathway that eliminates severely damaged cells and prevents both mutagenesis in the short term and tumorigenesis in the long term.
For a deeper dive, read Role of DNA Mismatch Repair Defects in the Pathogenesis of Human Cancer in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
Programmed Cell Death may sound scary, but it’s actually the normal way all our cells die. In adults, 50 to 70 billion cells commit suicide every single day to keep us young and healthy. Our DNA creates fresh copies of our cells so rapidly that we replace all the atoms in our bodies every 12 months.
Just think about how fast that is.
Whatever you eat in the next 12 months contains the atoms that WILL BE YOU one year from now. So every body, of everybody you know, is only 1-year old. If we could transplant 30-year old DNA into the body of a 70-year old, one year later he would actually be 31-years old.
In Vivo Evolution
The genes that perpetually regenerate our bodies are called Protein Coding Genes. They are only about 3% of our genome. For decades, geneticists called the rest “Junk DNA”, but we have since learned it’s not so junky after all. Check out this quote from Medical News Magazine.
In a Nature review published in the 1980, Leslie Orgel and Francis Crick stated that junk DNA ‘had little specificity and conveys little or no selective advantage to the organism’. However, over the years, researchers have found evidence to suggest that junk DNA may provide some form of functional activity. Some lines of evidence suggest that fragments of what were originally nonfunctional DNA have undergone the process of exaptation throughout evolution. Exaptation refers to the acquisition of a function through means other than natural selection. In 2012, a research program called the ENCODE project concluded that around three quarters of the noncoding DNA in the human genome did undergo transcription and that almost 50% of the genome was available to the proteins involved in genetic regulation such as transcription factors.
This means that more than half of our DNA makes logical decisions in response to each cell’s environment, including which specific proteins to make. Exaptation is the 4th or 5th reason why Darwinian Evolution doesn’t make sense to me. The reason our junk DNA gains function “through means other than natural selection” is because our DNA reprograms itself all throughout our lifetimes using transposons, also known as Jumping Genes.
To understand how this works, let’s start at the beginning. You, me and everyone we know began life as an Ovum, or egg cell, inside our mothers. To create a person, an ovum must encounter a sperm cell to become a Zygote. A zygote is a single living cell that contains the “diploid” DNA donated from each parent. A zygote is the only time a human being is in “mint condition”. Here’s an image of one taken by an electron microscope.
When a zygote begins interacting with the universe, it immediately gets smarter. Its DNA may download foreign genes within the mother, it might get hacked by DNA worms, but it will definitely update its own source code to improve cell regulation. Geneticists have detected transposing jumping genes in embryos as young as 5 days old.
When a single-celled zygote is ready to divide, its DNA software undergoes a process that computer programmers call a Project Fork. Here’s Wiki to explain.
Wiki: In software engineering, a project fork happens when developers take a copy of source code from one software package and start independent development on it, creating a distinct and separate piece of software. The term often implies not merely a development branch, but also a split in the developer community; as such, it is a form of schism. Grounds for forking are varying user preferences and stagnated or discontinued development of the original software.
All 37 trillion cells in your body forked from code, that forked from code, that forked from code, that forked from your original zygote. The best reason to constantly fork software like this is to A/B test its performance. Software engineers do this all the time. For example, the Facebook app on your phone not only has the source code to create the little menu bar along the bottom of your screen—Facebook has the source code to create 60 different versions of that menu bar.
So whichever version of the Facebook menu is on your phone, that’s the version that makes you do what they want you to do the most.
It might seem weird that the DNA in your body doesn’t all match, but it doesn’t. There’s a chance that some of your DNA didn’t even come from you at all. Here is a fascinating story in Time Magazine about a dad who is actually his own kid’s uncle. Using the miracle of modern genetics, this dad learned he suffered from vanishing twin syndrome. 10% of the sperm he produces today carries the DNA of his dead twin brother who was cannibalized in utero. The attacking DNA never quite finished the job because the dead twin not only lives on inside him, it actually reproduced a new human. This dad only shares 25% of his genes with his own son. 🤪
In Vivo Natural Selection
With billions of DNA variations to manage, the decisions of the MMR system are critically important to our health. The MMR system decides which of our DNA variations live, and which of our DNA variations die. 😱
The most striking example of this are egg cells in women. Matt Ridley explains this well in his book, Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters.
In the ovary of a five-month-old human fetus, for example, there are nearly seven million germ cells. By birth, there are only two million, and of those two million, just 400 or so will be ovulated during the coming lifetime. Most of the rest will be culled by apoptosis, which is ruthlessly eugenic, issuing strict orders to cells that are not perfect to commit suicide (the body is a totalitarian place).
Just think about how sophisticated our MMR system must be. It culls 5 million eggs from each woman before she is even born. That’s crazy.
The culling that happens within our bodies also happens within our brains. Ridley writes,
The brain is born with far too many connections between cells; many are lost as it develops. For example, at first each side of the visual cortex is connected to one half of the input from both eyes. Only by fairly drastic pruning does this change so that one slice of the brain receives input from the right eye and another slice receives input from the left eye. Experience causes the unnecessary connections to wither away and thereby turns the brain from a general to a specific device. Like a sculptor chipping away at a block of marble to find the human form within, so the environment strips away the surplus neurons to sharpen the skills of the brain. In a blind, or permanently blindfolded young mammal, this sorting out never happens.
Doesn’t the concept of Darwinian Evolution seem really antiquated compared to this? Cellular mutation and natural selection are biological processes, but not in between generations by accident. These processes happen every single day on purpose as our DNA tests and improves its own source code. When the MMR System works perfectly, it culls all the underperforming DNA from our “software repository”, which perpetually fits us into our various environments.
In Vivo Forever
This is why most longevity research is focused on the MMR system. At the forefront of this research is David Sinclair and his Information Theory of Aging. Sinclair’s theory, like most of the other theories I reference in this book, is based on Information Theory by Claude Shannon. Noticing the pattern here?
Sinclair explains his Information Theory of Aging in the book, Lifespan: Why We Age and Why We Don't Have To.
You can also listen to him summarize his research in the TED Talk, Is Aging Reversible? A Scientific Look with David Sinclair. (15 mins)
And here is a more in-depth interview by Dr. Lee Hood, MD, PhD. (71 mins)
Here are notes from the interview by Dr. Hood:
Sinclair asserts that the replicating efficiency of DNA codes degenerates over time as “noise” enters the system. This noise leads to “breaks” in DNA sequences. It is these breaks in DNA sequences, not the DNA itself, that cause aging.
Degeneration occurs in “reader” cells: Genes and their epigenetic expression propel cell development and differentiation. The body contains two basic types of cells. The first type contains each individual’s genetic data or DNA. The second type reads and directs DNA application. Throughout the translation process, the archival DNA copies remain pristine, but the “reader” cells degrade over time from the signaling noise described above. Sinclair equates these degenerating DNA “reader” cells to “scratched CDs” that don’t play music as well as they once did. Fix the “scratches” and aging slows.
Aging is a disease: Sinclair’s research suggests that these “scratched” reader cells are treatable. From a medical perspective, he believes it is easier to slow or even reverse cell degeneration (i.e., aging) than to treat many forms of cancer. If true, this represents a monumental shift in medical reasoning. Aging causes 85% of all human suffering, including most major diseases. The ability to treat aging as a disease and slow its detrimental impacts has the potential to extend healthy human life well into the 100s.
Practical advice: Throughout the discussion, and especially during the audience Q&A segment, Sinclair discussed his own strategies for managing his immune system and extending his lifespan. They include eating one meal a day, exercising big muscle groups and taking supplements to enhance his longevity genes. These supplements include metformin, rapamycin and resveratrol. It’s never too late to start combating aging. Upon retirement, Sinclair’s 81-year-old father changed lifestyle behaviors and now is in better shape than Sinclair himself.
David Sinclair’s research is fascinating. He and his team can artificially age a living mouse by introducing additional errors during DNA replication. These young mice get fat, slow down, and their hair turns gray—just like the rest of us.
More importantly, his team can reverse age a living mouse by “polishing out the scratches” in its DNA record with a process called DNA methylation. So Sinclair can also make these mice the same age again. All the information we need to stay young forever is already present in our DNA. So Sinclair argues that we will cure cancer as a by-product of curing aging itself. 😳
@americans: When we eliminate aging, we will eliminate one of the strongest certainties in our world. Benjamin Franklin once wrote:
Our new Constitution is now established, everything seems to promise it will be durable; but, in this world, nothing is certain except death and taxes.
Well, death isn’t going to be around much longer, so we’ll have to update his famous quote to:
Our old Constitution is still established, everything but social media seems to promise it will be durable; but, in this world, nothing is certain except Uncertainty and taxes.
Taxes aren’t going anywhere. Taxes are way more certain than death. If there were only two people left on Earth, the weaker one would still get taxed.
@biologists: The core of biology is digital. Matt Ridley said it himself. Richard Dawkins agrees. Humans are artificial intelligence, not accidental intelligence, which is why Darwinian Evolution doesn’t fit the evidence in our DNA. y-chromosomal Adam and Mitochondrial Eve are very young for some reason—so life on Earth must have been seeded by an outside influence like aliens, God, gods, interstellar humans, or humans from the future.
How can you believe in Darwinian Evolution and the Information Theory of Aging at the same time? Our random source code randomly assembled to randomly live forever through the process of selectively dying? So the faster we die, the faster we live forever?
Darwinian Evolution annoys me as a computer scientist more than it does as a Christian. It makes no sense. For more observational evidence that contradicts Darwinian Evolution, read:
@christians: Future generations will finally eat from the “Tree of Life”.
Revelation 9:6 In those days people will seek death and will not find it; they will long to die, but death will flee from them.
If you want to learn more about our DNA, read Traced: Human DNA’s Big Surprise by Nathaniel Jeanson. He used y-chromosomal DNA to trace every man alive today back to the three sons of Noah in Genesis 5.
In Vivo Upgrades
Remember earlier, when I joked about Moderna updating my DNA source code from Microsoft Word? Well, the joke is over. The latest gene editing technology, called CRISPR, allows scientists to add, update, and delete the letters in our DNA as if they were typing them into Microsoft Word. 😳
@ChatGPT: How does crispr work in less than 100 words?
ChatGPT: CRISPR works by utilizing a guide RNA (gRNA) that is designed to match a specific DNA sequence within the genome. The gRNA directs the Cas9 enzyme to the target sequence. Once the Cas9 enzyme binds to the DNA, it makes a precise cut, creating a double-strand break. The cell then attempts to repair the break, allowing for the insertion, deletion, or modification of genes. This system enables highly specific and efficient gene editing for research, therapeutic, and biotechnological applications.
CRISPR gene editing is the most significant discovery in the history of biology—way more important than the double helix. Here is the Ted Talk about it from one of the inventors, Jennifer Doudna. She won a Nobel Prize in 2020. (16 mins)
CRISPR continues to improve. Now scientists can gene edit our entire microbiomes. Here’s another TED Talk from Doudna to explain. (7 mins)
The reason CRISPR is the most important discovery in the history of biology is because it allows scientists to cure incurable diseases. For example, Sickle Cell Anemia is a horribly painful disease that affects 20 million people worldwide. In America, the average healthcare cost of each Sickle Cell patient is $1,700,000 with an average out-of-pocket cost of $44,000. Incredibly, all those lifetimes of pain and suffering are caused by a single letter mutation in the gene for hemoglobin.
Patient zero for the incurable cure was a woman named Victoria Gray. Scientists took some of her stem cells, edited them with CRISPR, and then basically gave her a bone marrow transplant with her “edited self” to propagate the change throughout her body. Over the next 12 months, Victoria Gray naturally replaced all the atoms in her body, so today there are no more sickle cells in her blood. Here is a video to learn more about this revolutionary moment in human history. (14 mins)
Single letter fixes are just the start of personal gene editing. Millions of people in the future will upgrade their DNA to become younger, smarter, stronger, taller, and more beautiful. By 2040, changing the color of your eyes, growing full lips, or switching to thick curly hair might just be a CRISPR shot in the arm. All the people who are addicted to cosmetic surgery today will become even more addicted to Cosmetic DNA.
How many future NBA hopefuls will upgrade their genes to become Shaquille O’Neal’s size? Shaq might even charge them to license his DNA. Corporations like Monsanto already copyright, patent, and license the DNA of fruits and vegetables that “outperform” their wild counterparts.
If I’m still alive in 2050, I may upgrade my genes. Maybe I’ll get some new hair from Brad Pitt or new eyes from Billie Eilish. If scientists can isolate the genes for hand-eye coordination by then, I’ll also copy genes from Tiger Woods, Shohei Ohtani, and Steph Curry. Don’t be surprised if you see 100-year olds throwing baseballs 100 mph in 2050. All the adults on Earth will appear be 25-years old.
As crazy as all that sounds, we may eventually see people who become augmented mutants like the X-Men.
Remember how all forms of life share the same programming language? The genes that make gills on fish or wings on a bird will work in humans the same way the Hox genes for humans work in fruit flies. The problem is we don’t know which genes do what, so we don’t know which of those animal genes to copy into ours. But that’s all about to change from the newest, greatest discovery in the history of biology, called AlphaFold.
AlphaFold is a new artificial intelligence that identifies the 3D structure of proteins, which reveals how they work. In the first 60 years since the discovery of DNA, scientists have only identified the 3D structure of 170,000 proteins in nature. In its first year of research, AlphaFold identified the 3D structure of the remaining 200 million proteins in all known forms of life. 😳
DeepMind, the company that owns AlphaFold, has open sourced all 200 million protein structures for the betterment of mankind. Here is a TED interview with DeepMind founder, Demis Hassabis, who recently won a Nobel Prize for this discovery. (26 mins)
Continue reading…
Our Cell Machinery
In this rabbit hole, we learn how DNA produces protein “micro machines” that build and maintain each cell. Our cells have all the components we would expect to see in a modern computer. 🤔
Table of Contents
The Theory of Every Uncertainty
In this rabbit hole, we learn how the latest science and technology indicate humans are artificial intelligence, which means something programs in DNA. 🤔
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Yeah confirmation bias is unavoidable. 🤷♂️ Share some links with me, so I can see where I’m wrong. I’m not ignoring all the “millions of years” explanations for life on Earth, I just don’t see any evidence of it in the DNA of life on Earth.
it's amazing how much detailed analysis you can provide then completely ignore abundant data that contradicts your theory. I guess we all do that to some extent, but your confirmation bias seems several deviations away from the norm. It sometimes makes reading the posts hard.