odds of it happening eventually, go up the longer you live.
Despite this DNA replication being highly controlled and very accurate, the sheer number of times it is performed in the lifespan of a person (estimated to be 10,000 trillion times!) means the introduction of a significant number of errors into the DNA of some of our cells from this fundamental process is inevitable. source
Other way round: they are immortal because they don’t have transcription and replication errors.
Yeah, isn’t aging straight up caused by degradation during replication, like oxidation or something? I feel like being immortal would necessarily imply we fixed that shit
Yes. Your telomeres start to fray at the ends as you get older due to imperfect cell replications.
If we could solve that we’d be effectively immortal from death due to age related issues.
Arteries clogging up suggests that your time would still be limited for many
There are ways to prevent heart related diseases caused by comorbidities. A healthy diet would still be required. Obesity increases your morbidity rate regardless of whether or not you’re getting gray hair because your telomeres are fraying.
But, correct, if you had a genetic predisposition to a comorbidity, then you may not make it to 199, or whatever age people start dying at when some bad genetics finally catches up to them in the form of cancer (usually).
Telomere also don’t matter when replication enzymes add a random adenosine into a gene that controls genetic proofreading.
Another point of view would be error replication leading to mutation since they cannot die. So a million years in the future how much different would they be from their original species.