As part of photosynthesis plants somehow very efficiently split water into hydrogen and oxygen, using relatively small amounts of energy from sunlight. Humanity can accomplish the same split by using tremendous amounts of electricity (that’s how oxygen is generated inside a nuclear submarine). If plants had to rely on human technology they’d use up far more energy trying to do photosynthesis than they’d possibly get out of the process. Plants have been hyper efficient in a way scientists have only been able to envy.
When I learned about this in high school I wondered if as our ability to analyze plants improves, humanity will discover how to split water as efficiently as plants do. I pondered how this could transform how humanity generates energy. A small amount of electricity (from a solar cell or other source), along with some water, and the right process, could split hydrogen from oxygen. They could then be recombined to generate power, either in a fuel cell, or by exposing the hydrogen to oxygen (ie, burning it, forming water again). All that is needed is for the day to come when human technology can split water as efficiently as the leaf of a plant.
That day may be much closer. MIT professor Daniel G. Nocera and his postdoc Matthew Kanan made an important discovery in January of 2008, and are publishing an article describing it in the August 1, 2008 edition of Science (article stub).
Prior efforts to split water efficiently tried to run electricity into water with some type of stable catalyst (a catalyst is other chemicals, that help the process along). Photosynthesis is a violent chemical process however, and has tended to tear down catalysts. Scientists have searched for a stable catalyst that can help make splitting water happen with small amounts of electricity.
Nocera and Kanan used an unstable catalyst instead. They dissolved an inexpensive cobalt and phosphate catalyst mixture in water, ran an electric current through an electrode, and with the additional presence of some platinum catalyst, oxygen bubbles out of the water and hydrogen forms around the electrode. Although the cobalt and phosphate catalyst gets corroded whenever electricity is not applied, Nocera and Kanan found that it reassembles when electricty is applied.
If you are interested in more articles on this discovery, check out google news: http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&q=%22daniel+nocera%22&ie=UTF-8&scoring=n
Talking about slowing down or stopping aging seems like talking about magic, something unnatural, the substance of a movie, a sign of excessive fear of the inevitable, a foolish desire to avoid a promising afterlife, an attempt to sell something to the gullible, or just a short cut to losing all credibility. Aging is baked into our understanding of the world, into the structure of families, the unfolding of human history, the forms of our storytelling, and into how people decide upon their beliefs.
Yet because aging has been inevitable does not mean it will continue to be. David Hume once pointed out, “No amount of observations of white swans can allow the inference that all swans are white, but the observation of a single black swan is sufficient to refute that conclusion.” Human history has been filled with the white swan of aging, and it makes us doubt the black swan of a method to halt aging could actually exist.
There are reasons to believe that aging at the rates humans experience isn’t inevitable and could be modified. The first reason is that different species age at different rates. Charles Darwin explained that species evolved from common ancestors, through the pressures of selection and time. The rate of human aging may therefore be an evolutionary accident or due to selection pressures humanity could use its creativity to escape.
A second reason is that some human beings have diseases which cause them to appear to age significantly faster than normal (see wikipedia article on progeria). If the process of aging can be modified by a genetic abnormality in one direction, it could possibly be modified in the other direction.
A third reason is that aging has already been slowed down significantly in many creatures by severe caloric restriction. This appears to effect metabolism, which then effects the rate of aging. While caloric restriction has worked in even lower order mammals, large scale human studies have yet to be completed. Even if caloric restriction was shown to work in people it requires significant discipline while impacting lifestyle significantly.
These reasons provide potential means for exploring the processes of aging. A great deal of fruitful research has been done on aging in yeast cells. It is the current scientific understanding that inside a yeast cell a reduction in caloric intake causes a reduction in three enzymes (TOR, Sch9, and PKA) that are part of the metabolism process. Reductions in TOR in particular decreases the rate by which a cell creates new proteins and slows aging.
Now, in the April 18, 2008 issue of the journal Cell (see link), a team of researchers led by Brian Kennedy and Matt Kaeberlein have published research linking ribosomes, the protein-making factories in living cells, and Gcn4, a specialized protein that aids in the expression of genetic information, to the pathways related to dietary response and aging.
By studying different strains of yeast cells they found that mutations in the large subunit of ribosomes sometimes led to increased lifespan. They also tested diazaborine, a drug which interferes with the large subunit of ribosomes, and found that treated cells lived 50 percent longer than untreated cells. They also found that longer lived yeast strains with mutations in the large subunit of the ribosome produce an extraordinary amount of Gcn4, a specialized protein which helps transfer genetic information during cell growth. They then tried preventing the increase of Gcn4 to see if it would effect life span, and it did in fact lead to shorter life spans. The researchers have thus found three different ways to effect aging in yeast cells. (This is not the only research approach being followed; see my prior post)
The path from such research in yeast cells to a treatment for human beings will likely be a very long one. While it is possible that a means to short circuit the aging process without significant side effects may be discovered (as was discovered for creating a twin of a sheep; see my prior post), it is far more likely to take decades, or a century.
Yet there could come a time when denying someone anti aging treatments is considered cruel and unusual. Perhaps some people born today will live to see that time. If so, they may be the only people living to have once thought of aging as natural and inevitable. They may have great difficulty in convincing anyone that aging was anything other than a disease, waiting for a cure.
A study by federal scientists has concluded that meat and milk from cloned animals and their offspring is safe to eat and should be allowed to enter the food supply without any special labeling. It is likely based on the study made by federal scientists that the Food and Drug Administration will approve such meat and milk for human consumption. The study has attracted considerable media attention (see http://news.google.com/news?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&tab=wn&q=clone+fda&btnG=Search+News), and has given rise to shock and concern.
Why would scientists conclude there is a lack of risk? After all, if you clone a creature, isn’t there something unnatural about it?
To my mind, part of the problem is that cloning is a terrible term. The actual technology should be called twinning. The technology made famous by the sheep Dolly doesn’t xerox a creature. It instead is an expensive process that often fails, but creates a slim chance that identical twins will be born. Because this technology is so expensive and so prone to failure, its unlikely that anyone will eat meat from a cloned animal anytime soon. Simply put, once you’ve gone through the process of creating a cloned animal, it’s too valuable to kill. It’s much more likely that people will eat the offsprings or milk of the identical twins created by the process.
Currently, we don’t worry about whether the steak we are eating or the milk we are drinking was from a cow that was an identical twin or not. Some people say that would change if the identical twin was forced into being by a process like cloning. Yet it doesn’t make difference to the molecular makeup of the animal whether it is an identical twin that arose due to complex processes in a womb, or complex processes in a petri dish, just as it doesn’t make a difference whether a human child arose due to conception in a womb, or conception in a test tube. When artificial insemnination first arose, people thought the human child conceived in a test tube would be somehow different. Time has put that fear to rest.
Interesting things are likely to result from twinning technology. For example, a lot of drugs must now be created by synthetic processes that are expensive and difficult to distribute. You could potentially gene splice a drug into a cow that allowed it to by organic processes produce an anti-malarial drug. With twinning technology you could then create identical twins of that cow and then breed mutliple offspring from such cows. The offspring that carried the spliced gene could be used to create very inexpensive therapies.
Alternatively, you could breed different cows together, and then when the cows have an offspring that produces a particularly high quality milk, you could twin the offspring so that you can create more robust milk producing breeds. Therefore twinning technology could be used in conjunction with the much older technology of breeding.
Regardless of the factual evidence, not everyone would trust such a process. Should such people be kept purposely dark of the source of their food by government mandate? I don’t think so.
Although I don’t think it is proper for the government to ban people from making the decision that such food sources are fine with them, I do think it is proper for the government to require better information be provided to consumers.
Therefore, although I agree with the conclusions of the federal scientists that the meat and milk of cloned animals is safe for human consumption, I would prefer that the source of such food be clearly disclosed. We should be able to know what we ingest, and choose whether or not to ingest it, whether or not we will be rational in making that choice.
Therefore I support the conclusion of federal scientists that meat and milk from cloned animals and their offspring is safe to eat, but I do not conclude that it should therefore be allowed to enter the food supply without any special labeling. In fact, I would support that all food in the food supply be labeled as to its origins (farm, factory, etc) and the processes used upon it.