Me: I was watching this documentary on Youtube a few days ago and there was a part where the narrator starts talking about the fact that there are certain creatures which can go through what is known as “indeterminate growth” which just means that they never stop growing in size.
When it comes to the plant kingdom, it seems a lot of species, have indeterminate growth. In the animal kingdom, there are only a few select groups of animals which can continue to grow throughout their lifetimes. Fish, reptiles, and some crustaceans, and cephalopods are believed to never stop growing. It is well known that many types of fish never stop growing. Because of the environment they live in, their bodies are in a medium that does not force a large weight or load on their bones, if they have any bones.
My thought about this was whether there was specific genes in reptiles, fish, and similar creatures which tell them to never stop growing. We recently learned that there is actually little difference in the genes of people and even bacteria. From this source HERE, apparently mice has about 75% genetic similarity to humans and even the fruit fly has about 60% in genetic similarity. If we go with the modern evolutionary perspective, we could say that we should be similar to most other mammals and animals since we all did originate from the same ancestors and same place. by that logic, we could try to look at the entire human genome, compare it to reptiles, find where the differences are and manipulate the changes.
The first thing we can try is to get reptiles like young baby boas, and try to inject them to slightly genetically engineering dna in vectors, and see if the snakes stop growing. If we can find which genes we change , edit, or stop in the reptiles body, we can thus realize that the reverse of the mutation we did in the first part, activation or deactivation of the same genes in the human body should allow for us to go from determinate growth to indeterminate growth where we don’t stop growing as we age.
From the Wikipedia article on Indeterminate Growth HERE…
Indeterminate growth
In biology and especially botany, indeterminate growth refers to growth that is not terminated in contrast to determinate growththat stops once a genetically pre-determined structure has completely formed. Thus, a plant that grows and produces flowers andy ruit until killed by frost or some other external factor is called indeterminate.
For example, the term is applied to tomato varieties that grow in a rather gangly fashion, producing fruit throughout the growing season, and in contrast to a determinate tomato plant, which grows in a more bushy shape and is most productive for a single, larger harvest, then either tapers off with minimal new growth/fruit, or dies.
In reference to an inflorescence (a shoot bearing flowers), an indeterminate type (such as a raceme) has the flowers developing and opening from the base towards the growing tip. The growth of the shoot is not impeded by the opening of the early flowers or development of fruits and its appearance is of growing and producing flowers indefinitely. In a determinate inflorescence, typically all of the flower buds are formed before the first ones begin to open, and all open more or less at the same time; or a terminal flower blooms first and stops elongation of the main axis.Inflorescences
Animals
In zoology, indeterminate growth refers to the condition where animals grow rapidly when young, and continue to grow after reaching adulthood although at a slower pace. It is common in reptiles, most fish, and many mollusks. The term also refers to the pattern of hair growth sometimes seen in humans and a few domestic breeds, but rare in other mammals, where hair continues to grow in length until it is cut.
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