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The reliability theory is very attractive. If you think about genes, gene expression and the pathways they function as a highly redundant and self healing topological network that at first is very efficient but over time is increasingly damaged, you have to wonder whether fixing the accumulated structural damage and pathologies (plaques, cancers, alzheimers, etc) alone will have much of a benefit on aging other than a short term reprieve by allowing the system to function more smoothly. (This is from an overall aging perspect. Don't get me wrong, we clearly want to address these and will still need to.)
From this perspective it would seem that targetted "silver bullet" therapies would indeed help the system to operate more efficiently but only in incremental steps and only for a brief period of time. Damage elsewhere is still occuring due to the fact that entire network as a whole is still weakened from the accumulation of many micro issues dispersed throughout. Perhaps the major ailments, the cancers, alzheimers and most other ailments don't have "root causes" other than the entire network is degraded. Surely a particular DNA mutation or protein misfold can be flagged as the culprit but would they have happened had the network been at full strength? Perhaps the strain on the network as a whole, while it self ajusts to cover for weakened components also exposes weaknesses elsewhere?
Restoring an aged and degraded network though would require not just repair but an ongoing and systematic approach of identifying all of the adjusted pathways and tweaking them at a rate faster than the overall degredation can occur.
The implications of this are significant as it would suggest that it is unlikely that there is one or even a handful of silver bullets that would have a significant impact on aging but rather would require a systems approach of both the constant repair of damage and the management of the genetic network as a whole.
There may not be any shortcuts and we may have to go the full reduction route of mapping every gene to every function and pathway and then devise mechanisms for tweaking all of the gene expressions before we can make significant progress on the aging fight. Let's hope not. We can keep looking for ways to patching up the network the best we can but it might be prudent to consider that we really do need to see both the forest and trees in order to get through it.
[Posted by: Maestro949 at June 14, 2006 4:44 AM]
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