Ingenious : Leonard Hayflick - Issue 42 : Fakes
▻http://nautil.us/issue/42/fakes/ingenious-leonard-hayflick
The year was 1962, and it seemed like cell biologist Leonard Hayflick had made a mistake. After all, for 60 years it had been known that human cells were immortal, capable of dividing forever if they were cultivated in the right medium under the right conditions. But some of Hayflick’s cells were not dividing. He could have chalked it up to the usual suspects: Maybe his sample had been contaminated, or there was a problem with the way he’d prepared the cells. A few weeks passed, however, and not only did his finding remain the same, but a pattern emerged: The cells would double around 50 times, then stop dividing. Today, we take it for granted that human cells multiply a finite number of times. They stop at the aptly-named Hayflick Limit, when their telomeres—the protective caps at the (...)