Can a Jellyfish Unlock the Secret of Immortality? (NYTimes, Nov. 28, 2012)
I read a tale the other day
That shows us nature's curious way.
There is a being in the ocean
That contradicts the obvious notion
Held by folks like you and me,
That one may be so very clever,
But one cannot live forever.
This tiny jellyfish, you see,
With tentacles so very thin,
Like the threads that spiders spin,
Without a brain, without a heart,
Achieves a feat that's very smart:
When it's injured, or gets old,
And death threatens to take hold,
Its RNA makes it transform
It to its previous polyp form.
It becomes a polyp that
The jellyfish it once begat,
Which grows tentacles, and then
-There is the jellyfish again!
But it did not really die,
And thus life's rule did defy.
For its RNA strands dictate
That it must rejuvenate.
By this cyclical duality
It achieves immortality...
The philosophers' concern
Is to ponder the Faustian refrain,
And the riddle of life to learn:
Is it worth to shed one's brain
Immortality to attain?...