Years!

July 4th, 2020| Topic: RaMbLeS | 0

There is a standard calculation for arriving at “dog years”: multiply the age of the pooch by 7 and you have the equivalent human age.

Turns out this accounting is flawed. Say Trey Ideker and his colleagues from the Division of Genetics at UCSD and others from the University of Pittsburgh, in “Quantitative Translation of Dog-to-Human Aging by Conserved Remodeling of the DNA Methylome,” published in Cell Systems.

The wisdom that every year in a dog’s life equates to seven human years reflects our deep intuition that development and aging are conserved processes that occur at different rates in different species. All mammals, whether dog, human, or other creature, pass through similar life stages of embryogenesis, birth, infancy, youth, adolescence, maturity, and senescence.”

But …

Comparison with human methylomes reveals a nonlinear relationship that translates dog-to-human years.”

In other words, dogs don’t age at the same rate as we humans do.

Commented Ideker:

This makes sense when you think about it—after all, a nine-month-old dog can have puppies, so we already knew that the 1:7 ratio wasn’t an accurate measure of age.”

Those scientists decided to study the “epigenetic clock,” that determines the age of a cell based on certain chemical processes that determine whether certain genes are switched on or off. One of these markers is the methylation of the DNA molecule. So 105 Labrador retrievers, from 0–16 years old, were recruited for the study.

Apparently a 1-year-old dog’s genes resemble those of a 30-year-old human: i.e., those animals age quicker. But then they slow down. A four-year-old pup is similar to a 52-year-old human. A teenage dog is kinda like a 70-year-old human, rather than a centenarian as the 1:7 rule would predict.

Ideker and Co. came up with a formula for determining the age of a cell, tissue or organism, that has some potentially interesting uses.

How do you know if a product will truly extend your life without waiting 40 years or so? What if you could instead measure your age-associated methylation patterns before, during and after the intervention to see if it’s doing anything?”

But the fact of the matter is we are all aging. At least as far as we know, there is no means of stopping that process, let alone reversing it.

With that morbid thought in mind, and with permission from my pastor at Northwest Bible Church, I’m doing a four-sermon series this month on 2 Timothy, the apostle’s Paul’s final letter, his last will and testament, dictated from prison, shortly before his beheading by Emperor Nero.

How will we finish our lives? Completing the Course, I call it.

I myself am already being poured out as an offering, and the time of my departure is at hand.
I have fought the good fight, I have completed the course, I have kept the faith;
in the future there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness,
which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day;
and not only to me, but also to all who have loved His appearing.
2 Timothy 4:6–8

For all who have “loved his appearing!” Awaiting the return of Christ (or our going to him).

And in an interesting twist, just two verses down, Paul reports on a co-worker who deserted him:

Demas, having loved the present age, deserted me and went to Thessalonica.
2 Timothy 4:10

This guy did not love Jesus’s appearing. He loved the present age instead.

Whatever years we might have left, let’s not be a Demas, but a Paul and … “love his appearing.”

SOURCES:
UC San Diego Health; Cell Systems; Study Finds