• Question: If we find a way to kill all harmful bacteria on Earth, will all living being stop ageing?

    Asked by Bethany to Sandra on 6 Mar 2017.
    • Photo: Sandra Greive

      Sandra Greive answered on 6 Mar 2017:

      I don’t think so. I am not an expert on ageing but it seems to associated with the number of times our cells divide (each time a copy is made of all of our genes). The more copies that are made, the more likely it is for mistakes to happen, these mistakes build up and work together to age cells. Also as people age, we stop producing particular growth hormones that allow cells to grow and divide well, this means older people don’t heal or repair the mistakes their genes as well as they did when they were young.

      However if we can stop all harmful bacteria from causing serious disease, we’d all live a lot longer. The rise in antibiotic resistant bacterial infections is a huge problem worldwide. Without commitment from governments and industry to support research into new antibiotics, we will be facing the same situation as we did before pencillin, when a scratch could easily get infected, cause sepsis and death.

Comments