There are many things folks here on SF0 know about me. I love words, I love photographs, I love pirates, I love citrus, maybe even that I love bikes. But there are also some things that my day-to-day friends know about me that have yet to make it to the SF0 character description of Inky.

Dear SF0,

I love science.

Love,
Inky


It may have started when I was in high school biology- we got to the section on genetics and I was astounded and twitterpated. I was already full on in love with mathematics at the time, and cellular molecular biology was something we'd touched on in elementary school but only so far as dominant traits and recessive traits. I was already a nerdy kid, and reading one of my mom's Atlantic Monthly magazines, I found an article that had a lot to do with what we were studying in school. So often, the things we study in our first 12 or 13 years seem out of touch with what is happening in the world around us. To read about genetics, evolution, and the food chain in a magazine my mother had just gotten? I was so excited.
So I brought the article in to show to my teacher.
As a teacher there are many things you can do to spur a child's interest, to kindle it like a tiny flame that may some day become a roaring fire. Typically, waving the child off and saying you only teach science to supplement your real job, raising horses, and that you weren't even interested in *looking* at the article she brought in, allowing kids to do as much cheating as they desired in your classes, and running the whole class in the most lazy way possible is NOT the way to kindle that child's interest. However, I was not a typical child. I vowed that I would study biology and take that man's job.

The next time my mother and I were in the city, I picked up a college book of cellular molecular biology and began studying.

I learned a lot about cell-molec, but the thing that amazed me the most was the organelle known as the mitochondrion.

It was an obsession that was not to die. Ever. As in, I wrote a slam poem about it this summer, and begin to bounce about excitedly, talking about how Goddamn Cool mitochondria are anytime they're mentioned.

Exhibit A:

Prayer 1

Life hits me like a fishhook,
caught in heart or jaw
I find myself gaping for oxygen,
grasping for some slick purchase
when the floor falls from beneath me
and you might not believe it,
but I pray

And when I pray,
I pray out to the heavens
or to something deep inside all of us.
But not to your heavens,
and not to the thing you think you're praying to inside of you.

We are similar fish
but I do not swim in your school.
The world is a quick river,
there are too many things that pass me by
and I get so shaken I cannot breathe
my body a pillar of salt
crystallized.
having looked back at the things I cannot let go of
I shut down
or close off, a hardened tomb against
all foreign bodies I am supposed to feel are brothers
this inhumane humankind-
and I must open my holy books and pray.

Our mitochondria,
who art in cytoplasm
hallowed be thy electron transport chain
ADP come
ATP be done, in eukaryotes as it were as bacterium.
And give us this cycle our extra electron,
but deliver us from free oxygen radicals,
for thine is the circular genome,
and the phospholipid bi-layer
and the maternal lineage
forever and ever, amen.

I find comfort in the history of our cells
we are the ticks of humankind’s second hand
Not just the blood in our veins,
but the veins themselves,
every hair, every tooth, every nail,
every muscle, every cell.
Life within life,
mitochondrion daughter of mitochondrion.
Like your mother’s smile,
on the faded black and white photographs of your great-great grandmother
and your the mirror in reverse.
We are what lives inside us,
we are what feeds and fuels us.

I murmured oxidative phosphorylation,
and would relax
like letting prayer beads spread the muscles
between my shoulder blades
Holy, amazing bacteria,
I memorized your enzymes
I feed you oranges and clementines.
I think of us when I savor these antioxidant shields
gold coins to push away the boatman.

And when I am feeling feverish and unwanted
the place in my arms too many years empty
the place in my lips too many years hollow
an ocean fish caught in some high tide puddle…

I remember mitochondria and history.
And you may protest, “My uncle was no monkey!”
Afraid of the slow change and connections,
the enormity of time,
But I am heartened to think that there is something
so constant-
shared in almost every plant and animal,
every feather, every scale, every leaf,
a marriage between cell and bacteria
that has withstood millions of years.

Now, I know some of you are going to say, "Inky, we love your crazy style, but WHAT ON EARTH does this have to do with aging?" Others of you are saying, "Oh.... I see what she's getting at..."

See, for a while now, biologists have known that a lot of aging is linked to mitochondria, and mitochondrial DNA. It's as if there is a war going on in your cells, and the mitochondria is the supply vehicle, moving around inside your cells (Yes. Actually moving around.) not just bringing supplies to your other organelles, but actually helping convert uncharged batteries (adenine diphosphate) into charged batteries (adenine triposphate). But that valiant little mitochondrion wears his heart on his sleeve- a mitochondrion has it's own ring DNA, that isn't as well protected from damage as your cell's double helix strands are. The very process that converts ADP to ATP sometimes creates something known as free oxygen radicals- little zinging bullets of molecules, that are unbalanced by an electron stolen from them. Those free oxygen radicals will steal an electron back from anywhere they can take it, and if that place happens to be your mitochondrion's unprotected DNA, the damage will begin to take its toll on the mitochondrion. Fewer mitochondria means your cells get less energy to do what they need to do. Your muscle cells will be more weary, your brain cells too. All of the repair that your body does on itself slows, and your body becomes tired and more vulnerable to the affects of time and environment. That right there, kids, is aging.

So what can you do to fight this sad (but natural) state of affairs?

Give those free oxygen radicals what they're looking for.

There are a number of enzymes called "antioxidants" that when coupled with one of those free oxygen radicals, will split into harmless molecules. You've all probably heard of antioxidants before, but that's why they're good for you. So, where do you find these antioxidants? Most easily- vitamins C & E. So how can I combat free oxygen radicals and combat aging?

Eat a good meal. Stop smoking, and make sure I'm getting plenty of antioxidants around the times I put my body under oxidative stress (when working out, make sure I bring a damn orange.)

So- here I go. Slowing the aging process.