Hundreds of genes seen sparking to life two days after death

www.newscientist.com...


The discovery that many genes are still working up to 48 hours after death has implications for organ transplants, forensics and our very definition of death.

When a doctor declares a person dead, some of their body may still be alive and kicking – at least for a day or two. New evidence in animals suggests that many genes go on working for up to 48 hours after the lights have gone out.

This hustle and bustle has been seen in mice and zebrafish, but there are hints that genes are also active for some time in deceased humans. This discovery could have implications for the safety of organ transplants as well as help pathologists pinpoint a time of death more precisely, perhaps to within minutes of the event.

More at link. So what other implications do you think this may have?

iTruthSeeker

a reply to: iTruthSeeker

Thats because many of the bodies processes are autonomic. An analogy might be your body is like a car, sitting there idling, in park, the door open, but you the driver are gone. After a while the gas tank runs dry, the engine stops, the battery drains and the lights go out.

It is still a car, but its 'dead'.

a reply to: iTruthSeeker

So that's how Frankenstein's monster came to life. LoL

Interesting all the same, as to the implications, i imagine there are rather far reaching.

I also read this, makes one wonder about what is "dead" and what is not.

A person's hair and nails continue to grow for a couple days after death, so this isn't really that surprising.

a reply to: iTruthSeeker

Perhaps horizontal gene transfer can occur from food source to consumer far easier than currently theorized?

a reply to: AdmireTheDistance

That's a myth. The finger beds just recede and it looks like growth.

They do not grow.

Couldnt have said it more precisely....

originally posted by: Joneselius
a reply to: AdmireTheDistance

That's a myth. The finger beds just recede and it looks like growth.

They do not grow.

Well I'll be damned. I've heard that spouted as fact my whole life, so just assumed it was true. I just checked though, and you're right. I learned something today.

originally posted by: Joneselius
a reply to: AdmireTheDistance

That's a myth. The finger beds just recede and it looks like growth.

They do not grow.

t

It may be a myth, but at what point does hair, finger nails actually stop any growth, after all it is just a biological process. I would love for you to pin point the exact moment any transfers of material from one point to the other would stop occurring, which could vary between individuals.

The noted recede-ding of the nail beds takes place over a extend time period, not days, I would assume, unless they were put to bed with a electric blanket in the winter.

a reply to: iTruthSeeker

At a cellular level, it is a requirement that parts of an organism die all the time.

When cell apoptosis does not occur, we call it cancer and eventually it will imbalance the organisms biological processes to the point of causing death of the whole organism due to insufficient resources.

If those resources are still in supply, most biological processes will continue, even if the tissue is excised from the organism or the organism has died. We do this when we 'culture' cells in the lab.

a reply to: AdmireTheDistance

Not technically true..it's the appearance of growth, more an act of skin dehydrating. I recall reading about people hundreds of years ago digging up corpses and discovering it looked like the nails had grown..must be a vampire..lol

Here is some interesting info
io9.gizmodo.com...

Interesting stuff OP.

a reply to: chr0naut

Ooh, yummy.

All Catholics are Jesus.

a reply to: OOOOOO

at what point does hair, finger nails actually stop any growth, after all it is just a biological process

It stops when the mechanism loses its power supply. That would happen pretty soon after clinical death.

a reply to: iTruthSeeker

There's a BBC science show called 'The Infinite Monkey Cage.' In this episode (mp3), from here, they had an entertaining debate about death and the point when we can define a strawberry as dead.

Not as straightforward as it first appears.

It relates to the article through attempting to define 'death.' Is a strawberry dead when it's taken from the plant?

originally posted by: Astyanax
a reply to: chr0naut

Ooh, yummy.

All Catholics are Jesus.

They are trying to be.

When my father died he scared the crap out of me ten minutes later.

It was probably just his brain stem shutting down.

He took one huge breath and let it out and that was that.

a reply to: chr0naut

Now they don't need to try.

As long as individual cells have some raw materials and enough stored glucose to make some ATP to power the machinery, and if the environment hasn't become so toxic that the cells can't function any more, then it's not outlandish to think that some bits of some cells will carry on crazy functions autonomously for a while.

Some cells crap out really quickly, nerve cells for instance. Others, like muscle cells or gut will take a lickin' and keep on tickin' as they used to say, and so might do wacky pointless things as mentioned in the article, like activate repair mechanisms.

Every cell in your body doesn't chuck the thing in simultaneously when you die. However, your brain will be a total waste along with the rest of your more complex neural tissue, like your spinal cord.

a reply to: Bedlam

Others, like muscle cells or gut will take a lickin' and keep on tickin' as they used to say, and so might do wacky pointless things as mentioned in the article, like activate repair mechanisms.

And wiggle when hit with a couple of volts. The idea behind Shelly's story.