Daniel Butler
I'm a Singapore where is my boat
Member # 1689
posted
We were talking in one or two threads about Claire - how much injury she can tolerate; whether or not she's immortal; how she would age; what would happen if you split her lengthwise; and so on. Someone, I forget who, mentioned that single-celled lifeforms are for all intents and purposes immortal; they just keep splitting. I found a link relevant to that, which shows that whoever said that was pretty much right.
However, the thing I wonder is, how do you know which cell is the mother cell and which is the daughter? Might it not be more proper to say they're both completely new entities and the old one is dead? (Re: Tom and Will Riker...which is "really" Riker? Are either of them?)
posted
In cellular mitosis its considered that two daughter cells result from the division of the parent. In that sense the "mother" does die, only to have its legacy live on in the daughter cells who carry the same DNA as the mother. If the cell reproduced through budding, then you can say that it results in one cell being the mother and the other being a daughter. In budding, the parent organism starts to grow a "mini-me" version of itself which eventually detaches to live out its own life, leaving the parent still alive. But cells don't practice budding as far as I know.
Registered: Feb 2005
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Daniel Butler
I'm a Singapore where is my boat
Member # 1689
posted
So these cute little nuns aren't actually 40 million years old, then? Tut.
Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
Yeah that article seems to be describing cellular reproduction in such a way that it makes it seem that the organism has some super ability which it doesn't. It not that the cells can live millions of years, is just that their reproduction is such that they have been able to preserve their DNA for millions of years and avoid evolving into some other organism. Plus their genetic diversity keeps them from becoming "inbred".
Registered: Feb 2005
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