Increased Lifespan Through Cloning?

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Impressive
Lately I've begun to think about taking biology/genetics classes in college...

Sadly, the last (and first) biology class I had was in eighth grade, and I just graduated 12th. So for now all I can really do is theorize, rather than get into details about these kinds of things

puppy do you have a twin? regarding phd in genetics i didn't mean to insult just wasn't aware of your degree. i know all about of degree scope and limitations from my own experience.

anyway what is your expert opinion on cloning? possible? when? how etc...

Cloning has been done many times, it's nothing new. Human cloning has not yet been seriously attempted, but in principle it should be no harder than cloning a sheep or cow. Cloning as a useful procedure, rather than a scientific curiosity, still seems to be some way off.

Thanks though I prefer to think of it more like I am incredibly lucky Scientific research is all too often all about luck...


Monozygotic (identical) twin, yeah

It is fine, I know a lot about molecular biology and development, but my specialty isn't on aging so I would not come close to being a definitive resource on it; we've got other faculty in the department who specialize in that field, though.

But what others have already raised as concerns in this thread are valid... it's true that Dolly didn't live very long, and the telomere model of aging could explain in part the decreased lifespan. There are more recent reports about cloning other mammals (e.g. dogs), but I don't know if the techniques used to produce the cloned dog are any different from those used in the past.

Would it be theoretically possible to clone a person? Yes. Until all the details are worked out, however, the clone might be quite sick...
Would any sort of human cloning happen soon? I don't know, but the ethical issues would be the biggest hurdle, not the scientific technical issues. There's a lot of research into stem cell biology these days, but there's still so much unknown that it's very hard to give a timeline as to when all these technical issues will be resolved. It's still not known how natural cloning (monozygotic twins) happens.
Would it be theoretically possible to transfer a being's memories, tendencies, and personality traits to another being through cloning? The very very basic traits, probably, but these would probably be more like very broadly-defining traits, like AS. Anything that is conferred genetically can be passed onto another being via cloning, theoretically. Memories, however, are about acquiring experiences and are therefore dependent on environmental cues, not just on genetics. No amount of cloning or genetic manipulation can reproduce a memory. Memories aren't recorded into the DNA of brain cells like a tape recorder, at least I don't think they are. Unfortunately, we still don't fully understand the biochemical or cellular basis for memory acquisition, retention and retrieval. We know that various parts of the brain are required for types of memory retention and so forth, but specifics are still very murky.

About the pet company specifically: they might be able to clone your pet, but at this moment it's not possible to copy every single detail about that pet's personality and behavior to the cloned pet. It is also not possible at this point to have a digitized version of a pet's brain that could somehow be re-installed in a new brain. We don't even know how specific memories are stored in the brain, let alone how to retrieve and copy that information without destroying the initial brain. It's like trying to transfer files from one computer to another without knowing how either the hard drive or the operating system works. The day they are able to do that will be the day that it will be possible to have a digitized version of a human's brain, and we'd all have backups of ourselves on flash drives! The molecular basis of memory is much less understood than stem cell biology and cloning. Barring some kind of radical breakthrough, memory is still at least several decades away from being understood, I'd say. But who knows?

I would guess that this company isn't in the US? Otherwise this company would go down so quickly for false advertising that it wouldn't be funny. This company is preying on the hope that one could have a loved one around almost forever.

As for Klint's question about whether the clone with your memories would actually be you, or merely a copy of you with all your memories: in the end, the person is a copy of you with all your memories. The person isn't you. But then this begs the more existential question of "what makes a person unique?" and "what makes you you?" and such discussion is beyond the realm of science. All I can say about it is that if there is an exact replica of you with all your memories and emotions and experiences and everything, how would anybody else tell the difference? They couldn't... at first. Once you and your replica experience different things, you two will begin to diverge, and your uniqueness will again become apparent -- just like how I am now no longer strictly identical to my identical twin brother.

Also, although we may eventually be able to extend our existence indefinitely, if not really extend our lifespan, through cloning, would this necessarily be a desirable thing? Challenge, suffering and loss define us as individuals and grant us wisdom and perspective in ways that eternal happiness free of the slightest difficulty never can.

If the person is genetically identical to me, and has all my memories, then that person is, for all practical intents and purposes, me, up until the point at which our experiences diverge (then we become different people, of course).

That was a bit of a plot point in some of John Varley's "Eight Worlds" stories (one of the readily-available technologies was cloning, with transfer of recorded memories to one's clone when one dies [it became important to keep one's recording up to date], and in order to avoid straining the limited resources available, the law limited each genotype to one child and one life at a time, as discussed in the story "Tar Baby").

At this juncture there is no way a person that is not you can have all your memories. There is no encoding scheme that anyone knows which can store one's memories for uploading into another brain and nervous system.

Each of us the the product of his own unique history. There is no known way to duplicate this.

ruveyn

This is quite true, ruveyn - I was addressing a "what if" question from earlier. It's patently obvious, however, that the company cited by the OP is engaging in the most egregious false advertising imaginable. "Personality transfer", forsooth!

Neil Turok works on brain modeling with computers (there was a topic around here about him).
he already did a mouse brain and he thinks a human one is the next.
i kind of think that's reasonable considering remarcable speed of computers.

than incorporation of computer mind into cloned body would be a great unknown.

To answer this poll my answer simply would be: no.

I do however think that there will be other technologies available which might be able to fix this.

there is only two problems:

1. Our brains do not work like computers.
2. We do not know enough about how our brains work to even model them on a von Neuman computer (all programmed computers are von Neuman computers).

ruveyn

Turok models one neuron and its connections with one computer. So it is bio based model. I didn't even know that people know enough about memory/thinking chemistry to model it but apparently they do. This Turok guy seems to be really good. Check it out.

I used to be in that business. In every generation they think they can model something they do not understand using a computer. It has never worked before and I doubt that it will work now.

Been there, done that, go the T-shirt to prove it....

ruveyn

So, all we need is about a hundred billion computers, and we can, in theory, model each of the neurons in a single human brain. Then all we have to do is prove that what goes on in a human brain is entirely neural, with no other components whatsoever (a proposition that has little if any evidence behind it so far), and we're ready to copy a single human brain!

The other six billion or so are just going to have to wait in line...

ups it not turok it is Henry Markram. Anyweay that guy knows some facts about the transfer through synapses so he does have a starting point. it looks similar to protein folding, little bit of experiment plus modeling to get the structure. i would prefer if the molecular detection realy goes to nano level in natural environment and with all the fuss about nanotechnology that is not happening yet. if you have any idea how to do that i would looove to hear.

well back to the stone age and my petty little problems....

grrrr,

deacon, yes, it is hard, yes it is not a complete picture, we all know that. do you know what are normal biochemistry procedures, PA gels, isolation procedures, detection with fluorofores, .,.. it is all very slow, painful and hard but eventually it moves the knowledge forward. if you have a better solution shoot it. i hate bitching from the sidelines.

Consider the SENS project (http://sens.org/), which sees cloning as one of several different technologies for radical life extension.

Cloning yourself would of course be impractical, for all the reasons mentioned above. Plus, why bother? The point is to keep you up and running in the best possible condition for as long as possible. Cloning replacement parts, which may become possible in the coming decades, would be a valuable step toward maintaining/replacing failing organs.

Naturally, some body systems cannot benefit from cloning, the brain being the prime example. But post-mitotic cells (esp. nerves and muscles) may eventually be maintained using other technologies. Post-mitotic does not mean condemned to failure in a given span; just that they don't divide any longer.

Note: the "50 divisions" mentioned above is the average value given for the Hayflick Limit, named for Leonard Hayflick, who's written extensively on aging. But plenty of cells divide fewer times before stopping, and others manage to hum along for upwards of 122 years without dividing after birth. So this limit is nowadays (as far as I know) seen as not particularly important to technologically-driven life extension.