What Did Van Learn Today? ... Hayflick Limit

Ever heard of the Hayflick Limit? I hadn't, until I watched a B-movie the other night on the SyFy channel named "Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid". The premise of the movie was that they had found this flower in Borneo called a blood orchid that contained a naturally occurring chemical that was able to "work around" the Hayflick Limit. So of course they set out in search of this orchid and - given the nature of the movie - almost everyone in the movie died in the process.


What's the Hayflick Limit you ask?

The Hayflick Limit is a theory that human cells only have the ability to reproduce 40-60 times. Once the limit is reached, cell replication stops. It has been theorized that this is why people die.

So, you can imagine that if a chemical was found in the blood orchid that would work around this limit, there would be a lot of people in the scientific community clamoring to obtain it. It would be marketed as a fountain of youth and would probably be very expensive.



Well, back in reality, there is some serious interest in this theory. The limit is apparently directly linked to telomeres found at the end of our DNA strands. Every time a cell replicates, its associated telomeres are shortened by a fraction. Theoretically once your telomeres reach a certain length, this is what controls the life or death of a cell.

Interestingly, cancer cells have the ability to lengthen telomeres. Cancer cells turn on an enzyme called telomerase which rather than shorten telomeres actually lengthens them - essentially having the effect of making them "immortal". Scientists are now looking into the possibility of using this enzyme to extend life.

It's interesting what you can learn from cheesy movies.

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