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Originally Posted by Baltar  I'm far from an expert in biology, but I remember reading that the reason we ultimately die is that there's a chromosome in our cells' DNA that gets shorter every time the cells split. |
That's the telomere, which essentially all cells/chromosomes have. Apoptosis/programmed cell death is when a cell can no longer divide. It's thought that telomerase can be added to telomeres to rejuvenate the cell and enable it to continue dividing. In fact that's part of what cancer cells do: their telomeres regrow. The challenge (one of them at least) is to rejuvenate the telomeres in a cell without having it turn cancerous.