Telomere Effect Novels & Stories

he says angrily. “Xael will be devastated. Judge me all you want. I would rather he is happy until the inevitable happens.” He raises his eyebrows at my response. “Inevitable?” “Yes.” “You are the best doctor out there. You just cured the whole world. Surely you have a plan to cure yourself,” he suggests. Only if life worked that way. “When DNA replicates, the telomere caps on its end reaches its end eventually. There is no way of prolonging that,” I tell him in the simplest way I know how.

In cellular biology, there is a hardwired, undeniable clock ticking inside every piece of human tissue. It is called the Hayflick limit. It dictates that a normal human cell can only replicate and divide a finite number of times before the telomeres at the ends of its DNA degrade completely. Once that limit is reached, the cell enters senescence. It stops dividing. It accepts the end of its cycle. It is the absolute, uncompromising boundary of human mortality. And despite the glowing silver veins in my arms and the ancient magic I had wielded to save a planet, I was still fundamentally human.

It took time and energy, and the old tail would not get reattached. On the other hand, Frank had completely bypassed the need to burn energy! In a nutshell, regeneration required mitosis, and present medical theory insisted that every division of the cell shortened the telomere of the cell. Once the telomere disappeared, cells would stop dividing entirely. That in turn led to natural death in all living things, but Frank's ability bypassed that process. After all, his regeneration did not require cell splitting, as the original cell would be returned into his body.