Recruitment of reproductive features into other cell types may underlie extended lifespan
Monday, June 8, 2009 - 05:56
in Biology & Nature
In the sense that organisms existing today are connected through a chain of life - through their parents, grandparents and other ancestors - almost a billion years back to the first animals of the pre-Cambrian era, an animal's reproductive cells can be considered to be immortal. These germline cells generate their offspring's somatic cells - other cells involved in all aspects of growth, metabolism and behaviour, which have a set lifespan - and new germline cells that continue on, generation after generation...