Short video spoiler history: The beginning of modern warfare

Chapter 108 Aging and Anti-Aging

Jinling City.

Zhu Yuanzhang and others noticed the role of drones mentioned by Tianmu before. A small team of two or three people can apply fertilizers and spray pesticides on hundreds of acres.

This efficiency is obviously too exaggerated.

Although I don’t know whether the mu in later generations is the same size as the mu today, and whether the area is smaller than today, but when I think about the drone flying across the sky like this, its efficiency is naturally much higher than applying fertilizer step by step, and it is more uniform.

With this efficiency, only a small number of people are needed to cultivate the existing land, and then more wasteland can be reclaimed, allowing more people to engage in other work.

And by working in this way, people will naturally not be so tired.

"Replacing physical labor with machines is probably one of the reasons why people in later generations have longer lifespans," said Zhu Yuanzhang. He came from a poor family and naturally knew the harm that heavy physical work would do to the human body.

Even among farmers, many are hunchbacked after years of farming and are in their thirties or forties. They look much older than people in later generations.

Not to mention those who have to endure hard labor and travel a lot.

Liu Ji and others also agreed with this. If Duke Han Guo were here, he would probably feel it even more. He has presided over many large-scale projects, such as Zhongdu, and has seen more examples.

"How do you think we can utilize the existing knowledge of various sciences and transform them into various machines that can improve efficiency?"

"Your Majesty, it is advisable to summarize and publish the existing knowledge in different categories and make full use of the power of the people. Because it is profitable, the people will naturally invest heavily and study it, and gradually they will naturally create various machines that can improve efficiency."

Zhu Yuanzhang nodded. This was exactly what he thought. The people in the Ministry of Works could do the job, but there were not enough people after all.

Taking advantage of the enthusiasm of the people, as the saying goes, there is strength in numbers, this is indeed a good idea.

But there are also many problems. For example, there are not many literate people in the society. Although the sky curtain is across the sky and everyone can see it, the things it talks about are disorganized after all. Many people have never had a systematic understanding of it, and it cannot be relied upon in the short term.

In addition, there is the problem of leaks. Auspicious signs appeared in the territory of the Ming Dynasty, as if immortals were imparting divine secrets. Although all kinds of books were strictly controlled from being taken out of the country, the news had already spread to surrounding countries through merchants and envoys from various countries.

Therefore, whether they were sneaking across the border or visiting as envoys, they seemed to stay in Nanjing and had no intention of leaving. Zhu Yuanzhang and his civil and military officials were very helpless about this. They couldn't just kill them all, could they? Besides, they didn't commit any crimes and even behaved very civilized.
Fortunately, the closer Tianmu got to the capital, the clearer he could hear what he said. In addition, the long distance meant that the message was transmitted much more slowly.

If the previous contents were compiled and published, all previous knowledge would be leaked out, and then the Ming Dynasty would no longer have a scientific advantage over its neighboring countries.

Wait a little longer, at least until we have established trade relations with neighboring countries, and we can make a fortune by taking advantage of our previous scientific advantages. Before that, we must promote international intellectual property protection laws.
“This is a good idea, but it will easily wipe out all the advantages we have accumulated.”

"As long as the location of the sky curtain is locked in Jinling, then Jinling and even Ming Dynasty will be the holy land of science. What's the point of the previous small advantage?"

"Hmph, if you don't run a household, you don't know how expensive firewood, rice, oil and salt are. A small advantage is enough to gain amazing benefits and greatly enhance the country's strength!"

".Smells like money"

"Enough, let's discuss this matter later." Zhu Yuanzhang interrupted the debate among the ministers. He had his own plans on this matter. Such a huge advantage would naturally not be wasted. This was not in line with his style.

Humph, China belongs to the Ming Dynasty. What's wrong with crossing the river by feeling your way across the river? Do you have anything to feel? Do you want to get free oil from us?

[The concept of rejuvenation first came from some Taoist scriptures and has been a beautiful expectation of people since ancient times. So is it possible for humans to achieve rejuvenation by some means? ]

[Of course, the method mentioned here is not alchemy and cultivation, that is like an old man eating arsenic because he thinks his life is too long. What we are talking about is to achieve rejuvenation through current biological methods, cloning, gene editing, telomere theory, etc.]

[From a scientific point of view, if we want to achieve rejuvenation, we must first understand the causes of aging. When it comes to aging, the current mainstream theories include the telomere theory, free genes, epigenetics, and other theories. Among them, the telomere theory was the mainstream when we were in high school.]

[Simply put, telomeres are like a set that are used to maintain the integrity of the chromosome structure. Scientists have discovered through research that every time a cell divides, the telomeres at the ends of the chromosomes are consumed a little. As the number of divisions increases, the telomeres at the ends of the chromosomes will slowly be consumed.]

[When the telomeres are completely consumed, the last replicated DNA sequence may be lost, eventually causing cell aging and death.]

[By studying the relationship between telomere length, age and mitotic capacity of fibroblasts from donors of different ages, it was observed that telomere length gradually shortens with aging, so people believe that the process of telomere shortening is the aging process.]

[This statement was rarely questioned because people could not provide any actual evidence]

[Until one day a scientist cloned his own dog, and the cells he took came directly from his old dog. He originally thought that according to the telomere theory, the telomeres of the cells he cloned were relatively short, so the life span of the cloned dog should also be relatively short.]

[Unexpectedly, the cloned dog lived longer than the previous one. This caused a sensation, and then everyone in the scientific community rushed to imitate it.]

Jinling City, in front of Fengtian Palace.

Liu Ji, Song Lian, Hai Yuan and others immediately stopped arguing and their hair stood on end. From what they heard, did people in later generations make research on aging and rejuvenation?

No one would think that their life is too long, and sometimes they even lament that life is fleeting, especially the nobles in front of the Fengtian Hall. Although Tianmu mentioned that balanced nutrition, medical and sanitary conditions, drinking boiled water and other measures can push the average life expectancy to more than 70, it is rare for people to live to , but this life expectancy is not a very high peak for them.

There are many respected old ministers in the court. For example, Song Lian is over 60 years old and is still in good health. It is not difficult for him to live a few more years.

Whether it was Zhu Yuanzhang, Hu Weiyong, Liu Ji, Xu Da and others, they all had this desire in their hearts. However, since there had never been a successful case, but rather counterexamples everywhere, they gave up the idea.

"Not to mention rejuvenation, if I had lived a few more years, there wouldn't have been the reduction of the feudal lords and the Jingnan Campaign, right?" Zhu Yuanzhang thought sadly in his heart. What he least wanted to see was his descendants killing each other and going to war for the throne.

The Jingnan Campaign was fought from north to south. Although Tianmu did not mention the specific details, the casualties must have been extremely heavy, and the damage to the previously envisioned northern border defense was unimaginable.

After this incident, the fourth brother would certainly not want to trust his brothers anymore. In order to prevent his descendants from repeating the same mistakes, he would definitely abolish the strategy of the kings guarding the borders, which led to the relocation of the capital.

Zhu Yuanzhang suppressed his thoughts. What Tianmu said was beautiful, but he lacked basic knowledge, so he didn't quite understand it. He only knew the words telomere, clone and chromosome.

As for the meaning of these words, he had no idea what they meant. Zhu Yuanzhang knew that this was due to the lack of biology knowledge learned in junior and senior high schools in later generations, which led to his complete inability to understand them.

It would be nice if there were a few books on the subject.

Liu Ji concentrated and held his breath, his attention completely focused on Tianmu. What Tianmu said at this time was too profound and obscure for him, but he tried his best to remember it and guess some of the content by trying to figure out the tone between the sentences, but he didn't gain much.

[Some people clone monkeys, some clone frogs, and the results are the same. No matter how old the original cell is, the life span of the cloned new life does not seem to be affected by the original cell at all.]

[After this incident, many scientists realized that the reason why people age does not seem to be because the telomeres become shorter, but rather it is more like the telomeres become shorter as the person ages.]

[That is to say, the cause and effect relationship was reversed before. In fact, telomeres do protect the DNA of organisms from information loss during replication, but the longer the telomeres, the better. Later studies found that long telomeres increase the risk of cancer. Moreover, the telomere length of mice is 10 times that of humans, but their lifespan is much lower than that of humans.]

[Therefore, the telomere theory has gradually been proven to have nothing to do with life span. Although it is still very important, the logic between the two is not contradictory.]

[So we are back to the original question: what causes biological aging? This question had not been answered until the emergence of the Horvath clock. Inspired by the Horvath clock, they speculated that the reason why people age may be due to the loss of information.]

[Speaking of this information loss gives people a feeling that this person seems to be a pre-programmed program. The more information is lost, the slower our program will run, the more laborious it will be, the more likely it will have bugs, and the more likely it will get sick.]

[When it comes to information loss, we have to mention epigenetics. People used to think that our genetic information was written on DNA, but this view has been challenged in recent years because scientists have discovered that some genetic phenomena cannot be explained by this statement.]

Qin, Xianyang Palace.

Ying Zheng listened to Tianmu mentioning more and more unfamiliar words. Although he tried hard to digest and absorb this knowledge, there was too much missing information after all, and he gradually became distracted.

When I came to my senses and heard about epigenetic DNA methylation, it was like listening to a foreign language.

Damn alchemist, you have misled me for so many years, and now when he hears the knowledge of immortality that I have been pursuing so hard, I can’t even understand it!
Ying Zheng was a little flustered, but he quickly calmed down. After all, the outcome couldn't be worse than it was now.

In fact, after Tianmu exposed the scam of the elixir, he had people catch a lot of chickens, ducks, mice, rabbits, etc. for experiments. For example, a lively mouse could be killed with just one elixir, while larger chickens, ducks, rabbits, and larger animals could be killed with at most two elixirs.

That night, he was silent for a long time.

After that, without the elixir, his health deteriorated. He had thought that Tianmu might be wrong, because he secretly took the elixir several times later, and he felt much more energetic after each time.

But, the body becomes more and more tired, and slowly, the elixir becomes less effective if you take less of it. Once you stop taking it, your body will become even more tired.

Ying Zheng had no choice but to give up the desire for immortality completely.

Unexpectedly, at this moment, I saw some hope in despair. According to Tianmu, aging is caused by information loss, so in order to delay aging, it is necessary to prevent DNA from being damaged.

For example, strong sunlight exposure will damage DNA, so the corresponding anti-aging strategies are: avoid strong ultraviolet rays, maintain a good attitude, control diet to a slightly hungry state, etc.

If he were a normal person, and followed the advice and eating habits of later generations, he might be able to reach the average lifespan of later generations. Unfortunately, he ate too many elixirs and his health was no longer as good as before.

So these suggestions are useless to Ying Zheng.
These suggestions are not much different from what the palace doctors said. The only difference is probably that Tianmu used all kinds of knowledge to get to the bottom of these things and thoroughly figured out the truth.

“I just don’t know how effective it will be.”

Ying Zheng was helpless. He was the emperor and could decide the life and death of many people, but he was powerless over his own life and death.
The boundary between life and death is not so easy to cross.

When he thought of his previous delusions, he had been deceived by the alchemist for so long, and everyone in the palace knew it was a scam, but he was the one who was confused, Ying Zheng couldn't help but sneer.

Laugh at your own stupidity and delusions
(End of this chapter)