CryoNet #31787 - #31788

CryoNet - Thu 2 Jul 2009

    #31787: Closed comments? (LMU) [Keith Henson]
    #31788: Biological 'Fountain Of Youth' Found In New World Bat Caves [oberon]

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Message #31787
Date: Wed, 1 Jul 2009 18:05:43 -0700
Subject: Closed comments? (LMU)
From: Keith Henson <[email protected]>

Dear Dr Spencer:

Provacative comment/question you made here:

http://www.drroyspencer.com/2009/07/cap-and-trade-and-the-illusion-of-the-new-green-economy/

"I can only conclude that some politicians actually want global
warming to be a serious threat to humanity. I wonder why?"

Comments seem to be closed on your article of today or I would have
commented there.

I have seen this as long ago as 1975 when Dr. Peter Vajk and I were
nearly thrown out of a Limits to Growth Conference in Houston for
suggesting that power satellites could change the models they were
using to predict disaster.  And it happened as recently as July of
last year when Dr. Hirsch like to burned my ear off for suggesting
there might be a large scale solution to the energy problems--which
did not involve a major die back of the human population.

"Increased demand will lead to higher prices, and as long as the free
market is allowed to work, new energy technologies will be developed."

Of course, lower prices for energy, even the prospect for them, will
lead to higher demand and larger markets.  There is little doubt we
need lower cost energy souces, and even if CO2 isn't contributing much
to the climate, it *will* acidify the oceans.

If you work the math, it would take 300 TW-years to turn 100 ppm of
CO2 into synthetic oil and pump it into empty oil fields.

That would be 15 TW over two decades.

"Space Solar Power is one of the very few renewable energy options
that is both scalable to the levels we need (the Geostationary Belt is
thought to be able to support enough satellites to produce 177 TW),
and be able to provide 24-hr power (not just when the Sun shines or
wind blows). It also appears to be the most benign of any of the major
energy options."
http://billionyearplan.blogspot.com/2009/05/india-and-space-solar-power.html

I discussed a specific point design that could lead to power at a 1-2
cents per kWh and synthetic fuels at a dollar a gallon here:

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5485

Some of the comments were so negative that they inspired this

"If you take a few minutes to read this blog, and again the comments,
you find the dissonance on full display. On the one hand you have a
person saying that there may be an energy answer after fossil fuels.
On the other hand you have lots of people not only saying it is not
possible, but directly arguing that a human die-back is more desirable
than cheap energy."

http://www.futurist.com/2009/06/15/energy-and-the-future-space-based-power-and-cognitive-dissonance/

As interesting as the technical discussion on climate change and
solving the energy problems are, I think your question at the end of
your article is more provocative.

Keith Henson

PS.  If your question of "why" _can_ be answered at all, the
understanding will come out of evolutionary psychology and perhaps
fMRI.  Thus some of the cc'es.

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Message #31788
Date: Wed, 1 Jul 2009 22:07:34 -0700 (PDT)
From: [email protected]
Subject: Biological 'Fountain Of Youth' Found In New World Bat Caves

Biological 'Fountain Of Youth' Found In New World Bat Caves
ScienceDaily (July 1, 2009) - Scientists from Texas are batty over a new discovery which could lead to the single most important medical breakthrough in human history-significantly longer lifespans. The discovery, featured on the cover of the July 2009 print issue of The FASEB Journal, shows that proper protein folding over time in long-lived bats explains why they live significantly longer than other mammals of comparable size, such as mice.

Senescence
"Ultimately we are trying to discover what underlying mechanisms allow for some animal species to live a very long time with the hope that we might be able to develop therapies that allow people to age more slowly," said Asish Chaudhuri, Professor of Biochemistry, VA Medical Center, San Antonio, Texas and the senior researcher involved in the work.
Asish and colleagues made their discovery by extracting proteins from the livers of two long-lived bat species (Tadarida brasiliensis and Myotis velifer) and young adult mice and exposed them to chemicals known to cause protein misfolding. After examining the proteins, the scientists found that the bat proteins exhibited less damage than those of the mice, indicating that bats have a mechanism for maintaining proper structure under extreme stress.
"Maybe Juan Ponce De Leon wasn't too far off the mark when he searched Florida for the Fountain of Youth," said Gerald Weissmann, M.D., Editor-in-Chief of The FASEB Journal. "As it turns out, one of these bat species lives out its long life in Florida. Since bats are rodents with wings, this chemical clue as to why bats beat out mice in the aging game should point scientists to the source of this elusive fountain."

Journal reference:

FASEB J. 2009 Feb 24. [Epub ahead of print]
(The FASEB Journal. 2009;23:2317-2326.)
The long lifespan of two bat species is correlated with resistance to protein oxidation and enhanced protein homeostasis.
Salmon AB, Leonard S, Masamsetti V, Pierce A, Podlutsky AJ, Podlutskaya N, Richardson A, Austad SN, Chaudhuri AR.
*Sam and Ann Barshop Institute for Longevity and Aging Studies,Department of Cellular and Structural Biology, andDepartment of Biochemistry, University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, San Antonio, Texas, USA; andGeriatric Research Education and Clinical Center, South Texas Veterans Health Care System, San Antonio, Texas, USA.
Altered structure, and hence function, of cellular macromolecules caused by oxidation can contribute to loss of physiological function with age. Here, we tested whether the lifespan of bats, which generally live far longer than predicted by their size, could be explained by reduced protein damage relative to short-lived mice. We show significantly lower protein oxidation (carbonylation) in Mexican free-tailed bats (Tadarida brasiliensis) relative to mice, and a trend for lower oxidation in samples from cave myotis bats (Myotis velifer) relative to mice. Both species of bat show in vivo and in vitro resistance to protein oxidation under conditions of acute oxidative stress. These bat species also show low levels of protein ubiquitination in total protein lysates along with reduced proteasom
 e activity, suggesting diminished protein damage and removal in bats. Lastly, we show that bat-derived protein fractions are resistant to urea-induced protein unfolding relative to the level of unfolding detected in fractions from mice. Together, these data suggest that long lifespan in some bat species might be regulated by very efficient maintenance of protein homeostasis.-Salmon, A. B., Leonard, S., Masamsetti, V., Pierce, A., Podlutsky, A. J., Podlutskaya, N., Richardson, A., Austad, S. N., Chaudhuri, A. R. The long lifespan of two bat species is correlated with resistance to protein oxidation and enhanced protein homeostasis.
PMID: 19244163

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