This Explanation Of Why Lobsters Are Basically Immortal And Don’t Die Of Old Age Is Blowing My Mind

[bong rip]

[exhale]

lobsters made a deal with the devil for conditional immortality and it backfired on them. you cannot change my mind

— juni 🦨θ∆ (@JUNIUS_64) June 21, 2018

ok so basically

lobsters do not die of old age. the only thing time does to a lobster is make it bigger and bigger, if environmental conditions are good

this is because they have a secret molecular trick over all of us senescent rubes: constant production of telomerase

— juni 🦨θ∆ (@JUNIUS_64) June 21, 2018

this Grade-A Big Boy is massive- 22 lbs, easily 50 years old. but it isn’t even as big as the largest lobster ever caught, in 1977- 44 lbs, estimated at 140 years old pic.twitter.com/Z2dGVuAtdn

— juni 🦨θ∆ (@JUNIUS_64) June 21, 2018

Telomeres are like shoelace caps on the ends of your chromosomes- a buffer zone, codes for nothing, keeps it from unwraveling

look, here’s yours, the little white spots on these human chromosomes

how do these things relate to our inevitable decline into death? here’s the deal pic.twitter.com/sD9yvIIHZV

— juni 🦨θ∆ (@JUNIUS_64) June 21, 2018

It’s one sequence, over and over, for humans: TTAGGG

every time your cells divide, they lose a little bit off the end of the telomeres, which fails to be replicated. At birth your telomeres are 11,000 bases long, when you’re old and gray they’re about 4,000 bases long

— juni 🦨θ∆ (@JUNIUS_64) June 21, 2018

There’s something called the Hayflick limit, and that’s why you and I die

When the telomeres reach a critical length, the cells just stop dividing pic.twitter.com/4HAUULd0fN

— juni 🦨θ∆ (@JUNIUS_64) June 21, 2018

“fuck the Hayflick limit, I do what I want” is the motto of cancer, and the motto of lobsters

because they produce heaps of telomerase. telomerase is a really nifty enzyme, it carries its own RNA template to build back the lost ends of the telomeres! pic.twitter.com/gWuIuM6jcZ

— juni 🦨θ∆ (@JUNIUS_64) June 21, 2018

Humans make telomerase too. But we make less and less as we age. We’re coded to just let senescence and death happen, and a lot of people have a lot of theories why

If you’ve got cells that constantly produce shitloads of telomerase and never stop, you’ve got cancer, my friend

— juni 🦨θ∆ (@JUNIUS_64) June 21, 2018

as a teen I used to like Family Guy (dunk on me, I deserve it lmao) and what’s funny is, in that one episode when high-Stewie asked “what if the only reason we die is because we accept it as an inevitability”, he was kinda right

our biology encodes death as an inevitability

— juni 🦨θ∆ (@JUNIUS_64) June 21, 2018

Death is still an inevitability though, whether our biology encodes a plan for it or not

entropy always comes for its due, and that’s what even lobsters must accept

— juni 🦨θ∆ (@JUNIUS_64) June 21, 2018

lobsters still lose in the very end. Telomerase tricks buy time, they will never experience senescence- the decline towards death- but it still comes at some point

that point is typically molting

— juni 🦨θ∆ (@JUNIUS_64) June 21, 2018

Lobsters never age. they keep growing and growing and growing. but their skeleton is on the outside, and it isn’t exactly flexible. They need to molt and grow a new shell once they outgrow the old one

this is a very, very energetically taxing and dangerous affair

— juni 🦨θ∆ (@JUNIUS_64) June 21, 2018

Lobsters molt the easiest in mid-life. molting casualties are highest in the very young and the very old

very young lobsters molt a LOT, because they’re growing a lot- 44 molts in their first year. this leaves them squishy and vulnerable, and is quite energetically taxing

— juni 🦨θ∆ (@JUNIUS_64) June 21, 2018

An ancient lobster colossus may not have as many predator concerns during a molt, compared to the young’uns (still watch out for sea turtles tho)

but the energy costs are what kills. Moving out of an enormous shell takes an enormous effort

past a certain point they just can’t

— juni 🦨θ∆ (@JUNIUS_64) June 21, 2018

at a certain point, the effort of moving out just cannot be mustered by their metabolism. it’s done. when a mega-lobster entirely stops molting, the game is drawing to a close

at that point they’re trapped in their shells, which accumulate parasites and bacteria

— juni 🦨θ∆ (@JUNIUS_64) June 21, 2018

I have not been able to find research on whether it’s disease or simply being squeezed in that kills in the end. I would love to talk to an actual invertebrate biologist on this stuff because it’s so fascinating

— juni 🦨θ∆ (@JUNIUS_64) June 21, 2018

This research would be incredibly hard to accomplish because you would have to either raise or track a good sample size of 100-200 year old lobsters, which are extremely rare

— juni 🦨θ∆ (@JUNIUS_64) June 21, 2018

I’ve also heard that some will simply die of exhaustion mid-molt, but lack the data on the relative proportions of all these fates

— juni 🦨θ∆ (@JUNIUS_64) June 21, 2018

but yeah. it’s quite amusing, if silly and unscientific, to think of it in a poetic sense. It’s like lobsters have made a deal with the devil, and the devil always gets his due

— juni 🦨θ∆ (@JUNIUS_64) June 21, 2018