Did death evolve?

[2810712]

Thanks, poison you are really trying to help me, you give me the feeling that there is somebody to help me, thanks.
My problem: If the parent doesn't die due to mitosis, then we cannot call the two daughters cells as new organisms, means there has no reproduction occured. And if we call them a new organism , then we cannot say that the parent is still alive.

Also, what ever thway of death be, the cancer cell dies, so it is mortal -this is what my mind argues.
Hope i'm able to convey my problem this time.

Please help...


hrushikesh

[canalon]

Thanks, poison you are really trying to help me, you give me the feeling that there is somebody to help me, thanks.
My problem: If the parent doesn't die due to mitosis, then we cannot call the two daughters cells as new organisms, means there has no reproduction occured. And if we call them a new organism , then we cannot say that the parent is still alive.

Also, what ever thway of death be, the cancer cell dies, so it is mortal -this is what my mind argues.
Hope i'm able to convey my problem this time.

Please help...
hrushikesh

OK, if I understand clearly your problem is that after mitosis it seems impossible to say who is the parent, who is the daughter. Indeed the 2 cells are the daughter cells, and there is no parent cell left, but it doesn't die since it is just mixed in its offspring. So death or not?

An interesting thing is this article about aging in bacteria: [url]http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.0030058[/ur]l

But the major point is that you have to make a diffrence between cellular death and death of an organism. I mean an organism as a whole can be considered dead, when its cells are still working (hairs and nails still grows after death).

HTH

patrick

[mith]

I thought it was a myth that started because the skin shrinks and reveals more hair/nails.

[2810712]

Thanks for the link,
but cell death and organism death are same in the case of a cancer cell as i'm considering it as an organism [ because if we want to call cancer cell as immortal then we need to consider it as an organism.]
Hope u r getting me.

thanks,

hrushikesh

[Poison]

2810712, the term 'immortal's not our discovery about cancer cells. All the world call them 'immortal'.

[2810712]

first of all ,
sorry for late response.

I'm also aware that u r not the person who has coined that term, i was just trying to understand the logic [?] behind it, at last i will call it a misnomer, and many misnomers are there in science , so i've no problem accepting it as a misnomer.

Thanks,

hrushikesh

[Mister Jon]

Death is a metaphorical character who wears black robes and wields a scythe, he evolved from a human as his parents had a rare: lack of skin and muscle gene.

No but seriously i disagree in saying that death evolved, i think it has existed all the time.

In some relation what i don't understand is that bible characters lived to old ages of 200/300 even with the lack of medical sciences as we have today. Maybe lives shorten evolvely - but agfain maybe not because now it is believed that people born today are likely tol live to 100

[mith]

Well if you go according to the bible, people lived to 1000...but since this is a biology forum, we will not discuss that(see links in my sig).

Statistics of age distribution show the death rate increasing until around age 100 which then levels off. This means you have almost the same chance of reaching age 120 if you've already reached 100.

Also note that people in the middle ages died significantly earlier than we did usually due to diseases. Even without diseases, they might still have a hard time living long lives because they do not have proper education regarding nutrition...i.e. you'll still get heart attacks if you eat organic farm fresh hormone free butter.

[ctmdvf]

I think in the contrary. Organisms evolved to live longer

[mith]

Animals are not selected for longevity but for reproductive success. While having offspring later in life is a factor, the main factor is survival, and courtship ability.

[Tamsicle]

Doesn't evolution mean death anyway? There has to be some sort of mechanism for passing useful information on to offspring....

[James]

I was thinking there could have been a situation where reproduction was hindered due to the inability for organisms to die, thus death was favourable.