StemCell Therapy

GETTY

A new study claims life remains in the human body - even 48 hours after the person has been scientifically declared dead.

The Open Biology report said genetic activity actually increases after death - a bizarre discovery.

Senior author Peter Noble said: Not all cells are 'dead' when an organism dies. Different cell types have different life spans, generation times and resilience to extreme stress.

It is likely that some cells remain alive and are attempting to repair themselves, specifically stem cells.

Life is not simply extinguished after death, like a flame or lightbulb, but instead lives on in stages, like a computer slowly shutting down, the scientists said.

GETTY

Death is probably more like turning a computer off and much less like turning a light bulb of

Arne Traulsen

Arne Traulsen of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology said: In spirit, death is probably more like turning a computer off and much less like turning a light bulb off.

Mr Nobles, of the University of Washington and Alabama State University, agreed with this interpretation.

He likened it to the Twin Towers collapsing floor by floor during the September 11 terror attacks in New York.

GETTY

He said: Like the Twin Towers on 9-11, we can get a lot of information on how a system collapses by studying the sequence of events as they unfold through time.

"In the case of the twin towers, we saw a systematic collapse of one floor at a time that affected the floors underneath it. This gives us an idea of the structural foundations supporting the building and we see a similar pattern in the shutdown of animals."

Death is a time-dependent process. We have framed our discussion of death in reference to 'postmortem time' because on the one hand, there is no reason to suspect that minutes after an animal dies, gene transcription will abruptly stop.

GETTY

On the other hand we know that within hours to days, the animal's body will eventually decompose by natural processes and gene transcription will end."

This was described by the reports authors as the twilight of death - when gene expression occurs but not all the cells are dead yet.

Continue reading here:
LIFE AFTER DEATH? Scientists claim dying is 'NOT like turning off a lightbulb' - Express.co.uk

This entry was posted on February 7, 2017 at 2:52 am and is filed under Death by Stem Cells. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed. |