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Lobsters, also called lobsters, seemingly have long been studied. science. However, the other day, scientists were surprised to find that these the decapods of crustaceans appear to be theoretically immortal. They are do not age, do not lose reproductive function and appetite, while always active and full of energy.
Lobsters are constantly growing and can reach huge sizes – a copy that fell into the Guinness Book of Records, weighed more than twenty kilograms. If the lobsters die, then from the hands of a person or teeth predators. They are also susceptible to certain diseases, therefore, about absolute immortality is not talking. However, in lobster theory, on whose life no one has encroached on and which is nothing serious ill, can live for many centuries. What is the secret survivability?
As it turned out, evolution endowed lobsters with the ability restore telomeres with which all living organisms on Earth related aging processes. Telomeres are located at the ends chromosomes and serve to protect them from wear. In 2009 for discovery of this property of chromosome end regions was awarded Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
Unfortunately, almost all creatures on our planet have a length of telomere shrinks with every cell division. Over time these sections become too short and can no longer protect chromosomes. For example, in humans, signs of aging appear already after fifty cell divisions. This phenomenon is called the limit. Hayflick.
However, nature has endowed lobsters with the ability to maintain telomeres in their original form. Crustaceans produce a miracle enzyme called telomerase, which restores telomeres, providing lobsters with a theoretically eternal existence.
Unfortunately, for man, a similar path to immortality missing because we do not have a recovery function telomere, and our cells, passing the Hayflick limit, most often become cancerous.
Lobster is not the only “immortal” creature on our planet. A rodent called a naked digger also theoretically can live forever. Some do not age fish, including the pike known to every Russian person. Yet one representative of the immortal class is the European pearl, which can live over two hundred years, constantly increasing in size and without stopping to multiply. As a result, the bivalve the mollusk nevertheless dies, but not from old age, but because the leg its shell breaks down, unable to bear the enormous weight. If this happens, the pearl longevity is forced to die from hunger.
