When I was in high school, I asked the professor in Biology class, what's the fundamental difference between a living organism and a dead one, in a cellular level. And if we can bring back to function a dead cell, tissue, organism, if we know and fix the core mechanic.
His answer was that we were too young and inexperienced to try to explain, but told us that there is a core mechanic, that works like an ignition, a "spark" that makes things alive. Didn't tell me if we can go backwards, from dead status to alive status, at least in cells. But did not tell me also, that it is impossible.
And I assume what he wanted to say, but didn't cause we were still in school, was about
Telomere and Telomerase.
Two years later, in University, I asked the Biology Professor, this time about why we don't do reverse engineering in the proteins in the same ways we do in our cars. When the cooling does not work we fix the cooling, and generally when we identify the part of the engine that does not work, we fix that part. Since we have all the shite needed, like microscopes, nanotechnology, biology and biochemistry engineering, etc, why we don't put the freaking amino acids, in the correct order and shape. To fix a bad cell, or create an antibody/antigen or help immunity. Of course in living cells/organisms it does not work like engines, electronics, it has many limitations, etc.
The professor in university was even worse than the highschool prof, He didn't even bother to answer to me, he looked me with a strange glance, and said "we go on". What he possibly wanted to say was "dude ef-off and make your own academic lecture if you wanna make some crazy theory philosophical assumptions".
Well 19 &17 years respectively after my questions, almost having forgotten about biology fundamentals, Mitochondria, Telomeres, telophase, amino acids, proteins, etc, I was very happy today reading this in news.
Seems like Google may answer a lot of my old questions, in the near future.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03348-4
