Help Me Understand, part duex

[TheRocketSurgeon]

Copying errors are a byproduct of how the chemistry works. You'd have to argue that there were no oxidants anywhere in nature, that ultraviolet radiation didn't exist, and that, again, everything we know about how genetics and cellular biology today is wrong.

Correct me if I am wrong, but doesn't chance have a role to play in how many errors are introduced and when.

There are some things we still don't know about cellular aging, but we've made huge leaps in the past two decades, since we became able to rapidly scan DNA. Since you would (rightfully) be skeptical of whatever I explained, anyway, and were decent enough to say "correct me if I am wrong" (kudos... seriously), I won't ask you to take my word on it.

Instead of just telling you, I'll point you to the major science journal, Nature, which has a sort of encyclopedia entry about it, and to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) article that explains what we do know about it, what the known causes are, and what we're still learning about it. I think you'll find both of them fair and balanced, to borrow FNC's parlance.

http://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage...n-14230076

http://publications.nigms.nih.gov/inside...pter5.html

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Addendum: I noticed, while reading the articles myself, that it mentions the work my (Christian, Methodist) fiancee and her team are doing with the genetics of C. elegans worms, where they are looking at a gene that causes the worms' cells to age at half their normal rate, resulting in twice the lifespan. It is a gene shared by humans, so mapping out all of the pathways and effects of switching that gene "on" could have huge implications for the future of humanity.

"The same enzymes also made the microscopic roundworm C. elegans live significantly longer than normal."