Question

The ________ is the amount of times a cell can replicate before dying, and in humans it is about ______. A. Hayflick limit, 1000 B. Hayflick limit, 50 C. Division constant, 1000 D. Division constant, 50

Answer 1

The answer is B. Hayflick limit, 50.

Step-by-step explanation:

The Hayflick Limit is a concept that helps to explain the mechanisms behind cellular aging. The concept states that a normal human cell can only replicate and divide forty to sixty times before it cannot divide anymore, and will break down by programmed cell death or apoptosis.

Leonard Hayflick developed the concept while at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1965. In his 1974 book Intrinsic Mutagenesis, Frank Macfarlane Burnet named the concept after Hayflick. The concept of the Hayflick Limit helped scientists study the effects of cellular aging on human populations from embryonic development to death, including the discovery of the effects of shortening repetitive sequences of DNA, called telomeres, on the ends of chromosomes.