Why does all life eventually die? Does anything live forever?

Question

Is there something in our genetic code that tells our cells to start breaking down at some point? Shouldn't there be a creature that is one with nature completely and does not eventally wither away?

Answer 1

Death is how nature makes room for genetic improvements. No organism is ever "perfected" and nature has no way of knowing when to stop an organism from developing, so things continue to evolve and die.

But there is a reason for it at the genetic level. In most cells, there is a structure called the telomere. It is like a handle that pulls the pairs of chromosomes apart when the cell divides, so that each new cell gets one full set of genetic material.

This telomere is made with a certain number of protein units, like little building blocks. Each time the cell divides, the telomere loses a unit or two and becomes shorter. This process continues until at some point, the cell dies when it attempts to divide because the telomere is too short.

This might seem silly, but this is a necessary part of development because when an organism is growing from fetus to birth, many cells are programmed to undergo cell death (called apoptosis).

This programmed cell death allows the fingers to separate instead of remaining grown together like a paddle, and it allows the spines in a feather to separate instead of being connected into a single sheet. In fact, without apoptosis, organisms would be shapeless blobs and not have individual limbs, digits, and other features.

So death has a crucial part in the development of any organism, whether it is a plant or an animal. But in some cases, the telomeres can be repaired. There is an enzyme called telomerase that does just that- add protein subunits to the telomeres, allowing the cells to divide more times.

This sometimes happens in cases where lost limbs are regrown in animals, if I remember correctly, and it definitely happens in some tumors. The cells turn on the "immortality" instruction and grow out of control.

In nature, there are some cells that can effectively live forever, but they tend to be simple things like algae or bacteria. There are also other reasons for cell death, like when a chemical breaks down the cell wall or the cellular machinery inside the cell that keeps it running. Sometimes, the mitochondria (like little power plants) inside our cells can die, and that means the cell cannot produce energy.

So there are many reasons for cell death, and this generally leads to organism death. But research now is learning a great deal about the causes and how to change that. Let us hope that the results are not disastrous.

Answer 2

Actually, some creatures are technically "immortal". Single celled life forms which reproduce by dividing into two equal "daughter" cells are identical copies of each other (and the "original"). You can call either of them the original so if one dies the original lives on. So more than likely there is a 200 million year old amoeba crawling around out there. Even though it may have mutated considerably form it's earliest incarnation, it is still the same amoeba.

As others have already pointed out, multicellular animals have "telomers" which limit the number of times that most cells can reproduce. This is partly to counter explosive uncontrolled growth from cancerous cells (which are only a feature of higher, multicellular, organisms). Some cells are also technically immortal even in an adult. Bone marrow cells for example (one form of adult stem cell) can continue reproducing indefinitely. We also have mechanisms which detect when a cell is unhealthy and orders the cell to commit suicide (apoptosis). Again, this would never make any sense in a simple organism, but in a complex multicellular creature such as ourselves, individual cells are often disposable (or at least redundant so we can afford to lose a certain percentage).

Answer 3

the reason we all die is because Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden. sin was passed down to all of their offspring and it has been passed down since. Lets say you helped someone bake bread in a pan. What would happen to the bread if there is a dent in the pan? That same mark, or dent, will show on all the bread you make in the pan. so Adam is like the pan, and we are like the bread. Adam became imperfect when he broke God's law. It was as though he received a dent, or a bad mark. So when he had children, what would they be like? they would all have that same mark of imperfection. Most children arent born with some big imperfection that you can see. But the imperfection that they have, sin, is serious enough that they become sick, and eventually die. and there is no creature that doesnt die. in fact, there is a hope for everlasting life...if you want more info on that contact Jehovah's Witnesses...

Answer 4

Yes as one grows older the mutations accumulate in the cells as the capability of the cells to correct the errors in replication of th e genetic code is impaired ....this causes free radicals formed by denaturation of the proteins to accumulate in the cells which causes degradation and ultimately death of the cells.......
Creatures with long life have better capability to deal with these mutations ..
Every creature has to die eventually.... :()

Answer 5

yes there is something in our chromosomes. it is called TELOMER.
when a cell wants to divide , it looses a little of its tellomer. tellomer is a sequence of DNA which produces no protein, but it is essential for life of the cell.
since when a child borns, there is no more tellomer production , each one of his/her cells have a limitation of dividing. for example they can mitose for 10'000'000 times. (this number is not exact) so, after that there is no more tellomer for dividition and cell cant mitose. when cell is unable to divide , it'will die. and this is the reason of aging.
this is why every living organism die after some years.
scientists have tried alot to enforce cell to build telomer again after birth of newborn, so that the cell can live for ever, but until now they couldnt succeed.

Answer 6

The reason probably is your questions would continue to irritate people enough so that it would finally get to the point of someone taking you out and then they would be punished for doing the rest of us a favor.

Answer 7

yeah there are many theories regarding death---THE WEAR AND TEAR THEORY, THE PROGRAMMED CELL DEATH, FREE RADICAL THEORY, etc.
all point to the accumulation of mutations in our body.
BUT let me tell you that in nature there's a parallelism -like there is an anti- particle for particle. similarly, its hypothesised that for matter also there is anti- matter and for world there's anti- world.
this anti - matter might refer to our soul and anti matter to heaven and hell. wait ! there's a possibility and even scientists like de- broglie have agried to this.

now, GOD ALMIGHTY has no beginning and no end and he is forever. all other things are mortal.
nobody knows about the end of universe but our solar system is slated for an and.

Answer 8

if you squeeze "infinity" concept a bit for example; 300 million years , ameba can live this interval.. we can count that cause if it can survive some kind of disasters it splits and splits with the same DNA.. that's it..

Answer 9

Bacterial spores can last extremely long periods of time, without any nutrition. Their metabolic rate is INCREDIBLY slow.

Answer 10

If something lives forever, how would we know yet?