"never slows down, never peters out"

August 16, 2018 1:21 PM

Scientists Calculate the Speed of Death in Cells, and It's Surprisingly Slow: A new study [abstract] shows that death travels in unremitting waves through a cell, moving at a rate of 30 micrometers (one-thousandth of an inch) every minute.

"Apoptosis is also sometimes called "cellular suicide," because it is a process of self-destruction. It begins with a signal either from the inside or the outside that informs enzymes within the cells called caspases to start cleaving the cell. But it had been unclear how apoptosis, after being triggered, actually spread through the cell. [...]

They found that [apoptosis] traveled through the test tubes at a constant speed. If apoptosis had carried on due to simple diffusion (the spreading of substances from an area of high concentration to one of low concentration), the process would have slowed down toward the end, according to the study.

Since it didn't, the researchers concluded that the process they observed must be "trigger waves," which they likened to "the spread of a fire through a field." The caspases that are first activated, activate other molecules of caspases, which activate yet others, until the entire cell is destroyed."

posted by not_the_water (17 comments total)

That's 4.3cm per day, or 621 inches per year.
posted by wanderingmind at 1:31 PM on August 16, 2018

the textbook definition of "slow and steady"....
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:38 PM on August 16, 2018

It's like some sort of....anti-life equation....

/Darkseid Is
posted by exparrot at 1:47 PM on August 16, 2018 [2 favorites]

Really interesting article thanks for posting
posted by bleep at 2:02 PM on August 16, 2018

It begins with a signal either from the inside or the outside that informs enzymes within the cells called caspases to start cleaving the cell.

Why do we even have that lever?
posted by GuyZero at 2:25 PM on August 16, 2018 [11 favorites]

Because it needs to be used fifty billion times a day or we'd be riddled with cancer or malfunctioning cells, and necrosis is even less pretty, but it's best just to read the wikipedia article.
posted by BrotherCaine at 2:39 PM on August 16, 2018 [15 favorites]

Huh, an actual speed of death (files this trivia away somewhere for a dark rainy day).
posted by rodlymight at 2:43 PM on August 16, 2018 [1 favorite]

Because I could not stop for Death –
He slowed way down for me –
posted by moonmilk at 4:13 PM on August 16, 2018 [12 favorites]

"Ah! lovely Appearance of Death,
No Sight upon Earth is so fair;
Not all the gay Pageants that breathe,
Can with a dead Body compare."
- C. Wesley (arr: Billings)
posted by Richard Saunders at 4:14 PM on August 16, 2018

That's 4.3cm per day, or 621 inches per year.

30/1000in per minute= 3in per 100 minutes or...wait, how tall am I? Oh SHIT! I'll be dead by Saturday! Crap! D:
posted by sexyrobot at 6:08 PM on August 16, 2018 [1 favorite]

Literally "dying by inches".
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 7:18 PM on August 16, 2018

There's no time for us...
posted by fairmettle at 8:56 PM on August 16, 2018

Well I won't think about that AT ALL when I am awakened by an inchoate unease and lie staring at the ceiling for hours
posted by Miko at 8:59 PM on August 16, 2018 [1 favorite]

Why do we even have that lever?

The even more incredible thing to me is that it seems almost all animals have the same lever--we evolved a way to tell ourselves to die before we evolved just anything else but a mouth.
posted by mark k at 11:23 PM on August 16, 2018 [2 favorites]

I recall reading an anecdote about a cat in a nursing home who always seemed to know when a patient was about to die, and would spend the last four hours or so of the patient's life keeping them company. Which (ruling out supernatural/horror explanations) suggests that (a) some animals (perhaps ones with a sharp sense of smell, or some other senses) can sense the process of death, and (b) one starts dying (i.e., irrevocably breaking down) a few hours before losing consciousness.
posted by acb at 3:46 AM on August 17, 2018

Well I won't think about that AT ALL when I am awakened by an inchoate unease and lie staring at the ceiling for hours

Just think of it as the slow, soothing pace of the cleaning system steadily removing all the old, worn out cells before they start to rot and become cancerous.
posted by straight at 7:34 AM on August 17, 2018

Why do we even have that lever?
I think some of you may be missing the reference.
posted by evilmomlady at 8:18 AM on August 17, 2018 [2 favorites]