By studying frog eggs, the researchers measured the rate at which cells self-destruct when they “kill themselves” for the benefit of body parts.
Name : Speed of death.
Age : Actually this is not very relevant.
Appearance : Cells
Why say it this way? Because you’re going to have to read some unpleasant science.
Stop circling around and get to the heart of the matter. Are you ready? Two Stanford University systems biologists, Xianrui Cheng and James Ferrell, figured out the “speed” of cell death.
Image simulates the breakdown of a human cell. (Photo: Kateryna Kon/Getty Images).
What is a systems biologist? A biologist and also very good at math, but this is not necessarily something you need to worry about.
So what should I care about? If we knew how quickly cells die, and more deeply, how they die, we would be able to do amazing things.
Like what? Oh, you know, curing cancers by “encouraging” cancer cells to kill themselves, or stopping the cells of an Alzheimer’s patient from dying.
What is the speed of death? According to Cheng and Ferrell, it’s 30 micrometers a minute .
Micrometer, I don’t think I’ve heard this word before. It is also understandable, because this unit is very small and rarely used in practice. Micrometer, commonly referred to as micron, is equal to 1*10-6 meters, one millionth of a meter, or one thousandth of a millimeter.
So the rate of death is 30 thousandths of a millimeter per minute? Exactly. To make it easier to remember, the New Scientist page has converted to two millimeters/hour.
What exactly dies at that rate? Cell. By studying frog cells, Cheng and Ferrell measured the rate of “apoptosis,” or “programmed cell death,” when cells “spontaneously” close” for the benefit of body parts. Sometimes the cell will sense it’s time to go; other times the “neighbor” cells will give them a boost with trigger waves. Cheng and Ferrell measured the speed of those waves.
Is cell death good or bad? Mostly good . On average, humans lose about 50 billion cells a day, and you can see we’re still alive and well. However, there are times when cells become “bewildered” , the necessary cells die while the bad cells live, so the more we understand the process of cell death, the possible interventions. medical card will be more effective.