Life After Life

David Cowles
Oct 17, 2024
“Nothing lasts forever. Maybe not even death.”
Remember when things were simple? First you were alive, then you were dead. “Those were the days!” (Archie Bunker) Then medicine blurred the lines. ‘Brain death’ replaced ‘cardiac death’ as our preferred criterion; but now things have just gotten a whole lot more complicated!
Researchers at Tufts University and the University of Vermont have found that the cells of deceased organisms can live on for substantial periods of time on their own and indefinitely when provided with nutrients, oxygen, and bioelectric or biochemical stimulation. Impressed? Don’t be: this is just the tip of the iceberg.
Not all cells need to be reanimated immediately after the death of the host organism. For example, human white blood cells can survive up to 86 hours after organismal death. Muscle cells harvested from mice can be reanimated after as many as 14 days, fibroblast cells from goats and sheep after as long as a month.
More astonishing still, these rejuvenated cells, nicknamed ‘xenobots’, have the ability to form multicellular organisms apparently unrelated to the body plans of their original host organisms. Skin cells extracted from deceased frog embryos can spontaneously reorganize into multicellular organisms in which they exhibit behaviors well outside their original biological roles. For example, these ‘second chance cells’ use cilia – small, hair-like structures – to navigate their surroundings. Who says there are no second acts in America?
It gets better. Human lung cells can self-assemble into multicellular organisms that repair themselves and any neurons that just happen to be nearby. Apparently, there is such a thing as ‘a born caregiver’. The ability to restore themselves if they become damaged is a natural feature of living organisms, and it is preserved in xenobot biology. Xenobots can close a severe laceration within 5 minutes. These injured cells are able to heal their wounds, restore their shape and continue their work as before.
Xenobots are even capable of memory; they have the ability to record information and use that information to modify their behavior. Researchers now hope that these xenobots may be trained to exhibit certain behaviors upon sensing appropriate stimuli. You were hoping your children would exhibit this ability, but that experiment turned out to be a howling failure; now you must place all your hope on xenobots.
Can they learn to absorb and break down certain chemicals, especially environmental toxins? Can we train them to synthesize and excrete useful chemicals and proteins in the process?
The remarkable plasticity of cellular collectives allows them to form bodies and exhibit behaviors that are quite different from their original organisms - without undergoing any modifications at the DNA level! These cells can spontaneously take on new roles and create new body plans without waiting for mutation and natural selection to work their magic.
Perhaps these xenobots have things to teach us. For example, can they help us understand how individual cells naturally come together, communicate, and specialize to create a larger organism? It’s a new model that may provide a foundation for regenerative medicine. Xenobots and their successors may also provide insight into how multicellular organisms arose from ancient single celled organisms, and the origins of information processing, decision making and cognition in biological organisms.
Perhaps you’re not as excited by all this as I am. Perhaps you don’t care so much about unicellular life forms. Maybe you’re wondering, “What about me? Why can’t my life be prolonged?” Well good news for you too!
A new technology called OrganEx may be right up your street. Basically, OrganEx adds cellular level life support to traditional technologies like ECMO. It revives the body more slowly employing a gentler process of reviving cells that have already begun to die (see above). Turns out those single cell organisms are important after all!
To test OrganEx, a Yale University team turned to humanity’s closest non-primate relative – who else but the common household pig? Two monitors, one for the heart and one for brain activity, showed flat lines. The pigs were dead. An hour passed. Then scientists connected each animal to the OrganEx system: heart monitors connected to four out of five pigs began to light up. The hearts’ electrical activity had resumed spontaneously, without chest compressions or other obvious lifesaving measures.
What does this mean? With this technology, doctors might be able to extend the amount of time someone could be ‘dead’ before recovering. Minimally, it might make more organs from more bodies recoverable for transplantation.
At a cellular level at least, death may not be as quick or as final as once thought. For the person who collapses from a heart attack and remains on the ground for 10 minutes, the findings raise a key question: How dead are they, really? One could imagine using OrganEx after a cardiac arrest. Nothing lasts forever. Maybe not even death.
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