One of the most famous figures in the field of research into the possibility of longevity, founder of the SENS Research Foundation, Aubrey de Gray, claims that "many of the people living today will live a thousand years or longer." A number of modern scientists believe that by 2050 a radically new type of person will be formed on Earth. This will be facilitated by natural selection and the development of technology.
Aubrey de gray
Evolution plus gene therapy?
Cadell Last, a researcher at the World Brain Institute, claims that right now humanity is experiencing a major evolutionary leap. It is possible that by the middle of this century, our life expectancy will increase significantly, he says. People will be able to give birth to children at any age, and most of the daily tasks will be performed using artificial intelligence. We will also spend most of our time in virtual reality.
“At 80 or 100, you will be radically different from today's grandparents,” says Last.
So, he says, puberty will increase in future people. Youth will fall on the years that are now considered the middle age - 40-60 years. And in total we will live for 120-150 years. And this is far from the limit.
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On the one hand, the evolution of the brain will contribute to an increase in life expectancy. The fact is that as civilization develops, our brain has to absorb more and more information, and it naturally grows in size. Accordingly, he needs more energy for development and maturation. So the physical growth rate of the body slows down.
But, as they say, trust in God, but don't do it yourself! It would be naive to "wait for the weather by the sea" and not try to improve life when there are all the possibilities for this. The already mentioned Aubrey de Gray believes that aging is just a "side effect of life." It can be fought by interfering with the mechanism of the functioning of living cells at the genetic level. After all, conventional medicine treats mainly the symptoms of the disease.
And, for example, behavioral changes in Alzheimer's disease appear much later than the brain is already irreversibly damaged by amyloid plaques … While gene therapy methods are mostly at the research stage, but in the next 30 years it is likely that thanks to them a person will be able to prolong his life. will increase significantly.
At the 12th International Conference of Cognitive Neurosciences in Brisbane (Australia), a group of neurophysiologists spoke about their discovery. It turns out that the area of the brain responsible for spatial attention does not show signs of aging with age, while most other brain functions deteriorate. It is possible that over time it will be possible to reveal the mechanism of brain aging and learn to “turn off” age-related destruction programs. This will avoid such unpleasant effects of aging as sclerosis or insanity.
And if you replace it?
But that is not all! Extension of life can also provide replacement of worn-out parts of the body. After all, it is the failure of an organ that is most often the cause of death. Artificial hearts, liver and kidneys have already been developed. The challenge is to make them work long enough and without interruption. Donor organs also save many. True, their number is still not enough to save the lives of all suffering.
In 2013, the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum hosted a presentation of a model created by London-based Robot Co, designed to showcase a breakthrough in biobuilding and the creation of artificial organs.
The solution would be to grow the necessary living tissues "in a test tube". And work in this direction is already underway. In the next three years, whole "farms" for growing human organs may appear! Artificial livers, lungs and kidneys already exist, which are used, for example, to test drugs, chemicals and cosmetics.
But in order to conduct full-fledged research, an entire human body is required. Today, this problem is being solved by conducting experiments on animals, which many consider unethical. Therefore, it is planned to develop biomachines - complexes of human organs functioning on microchips.
Thus, the staff of the University of Illinois (Chicago, USA) presented a new class of walking mini-biorobots working on muscle cells. Two years ago, scientists were faced with the task of making the robot move like a living organism … At first, muscle cells of the heart were used for this purpose. But later it turned out that skeletal muscles are much better controlled by electrical impulses.
A breakthrough in the creation of a new generation of robots made it possible to make a 3D printer. It was thanks to him that he managed to "print" miniature machines from flexible hydrogel and living skeletal muscles. Electrical impulses are applied to the muscles to contract and unclench. Exposure to electrical impulses of different frequencies can cause biorobots, for example, to move faster or slower.
New model
The idea to integrate bioorganisms into robotics has found other incarnations. Last year, the public was shown miniature biorobots, only a few millimeters in size, capable of moving independently due to the contraction of living cells of the rat heart muscle.
Unfortunately, these cells are constantly contracting, so movement control becomes difficult. The new model is based on strips of skeletal muscle cells, and it is launched from the same external electrical impulses.
The biorobot design is created by analogy with the muscle-tendon blocks in vertebrates. The 3D printed hydrogel frame is strong and flexible enough to allow the robot to bend as if it had joints. Two columns attach a strip of muscle to the frame (similar to attaching a tendon to bones) - and as a result, they begin to function as limbs.
The speed of movement of such a biorobot depends on the frequency of electrical impulses. Skeletal muscle cells have helped the mechanism move more freely and at the same time increased the ability to control it …
But this is not at all the limit of possibilities. Now the authors of the development are going to further complicate the control system, for example, by implanting nerve cells into the structure. This will allow biorobots to move in different directions using light or under the influence of chemical reactions.
According to the project manager Rashid Bashir, having acquired autonomous sensors, such robots can independently search for various chemical compounds, in particular toxins. The biorobot must find the source of their distribution and neutralize it by spraying the appropriate reagents.
Five organs
And if we talk not about robots, but about the human body? A team of Harvard scientists is working on a system of five artificially grown organs. This will allow you to better understand the mechanisms of various ailments, such as asthma.
“If our new system is approved by officials, it will eliminate most of the laboratories conducting animal testing around the world,” commented Uwe Marks, a biotechnologist at the Technical University of Berlin, head of TissUse.
Also, artificial organs can become an alternative to donor organs, which are sorely lacking now. Moreover, it is possible that with their help it will be possible to solve the problem of rejection of foreign organs by the body, which often becomes the cause of death of patients after transplantation.
Until recently, the issue of growing human individuals without a brain (by cloning) in order to turn them into donors was seriously discussed. With the possibility of growing various organs outside the body, the need to extract them from organisms will disappear along with the problem of ethics.
If we learn to transfer the contents of the human brain to computer media, thus creating the thinking matrices of specific individuals, then later a chip with this matrix can be inserted into an artificial body that will last 100 or 200 years. After this period, the body can be replaced, and the human "I" will be preserved along with all its memory and individuality.
By the way, with the current pace of technology development, this can happen relatively soon - by 2045. True, the "artificial" may have problems with reproduction. But surely, sooner or later, scientists will be able to solve the problem of reproduction, and then artificial systems will begin to fully function as biological.
Elena GIMADIEVA, Ida SHAKHOVSKAYA