Thread: Why cells die without oxygen?

If a car runs out of gas, it doesnt have energy and stays iddle until you put gas a minute, an hour or a week later.

But why cant the cells in our body remain iddle until oxygen becomes available instead of "dying"?

I think it's more like if the car ran out of gas, then sat in a New England field for 40 years with it's hood open.

My point being that bio material is a lot more fragile, and needs energy to renew itself, and keep from being eaten.

My point being that bio material is a lot more fragile, and needs energy to renew itself, and keep from being eaten.

1- If something fragile isnt touched it doesnt break, what causes the cell damage when the cell has no oxygen?

2- Eaten, as in eaten by bacterias that dont need oxygen themselves? Do bacterias go so fast to work that they damage cells if someone goes without oxygen for 30 minutes?

After an extended period of anaerobic conditions the lactic acid build-up caused by the switch to anaerobic respiration would probably degrade the cells.

Cells are operating far from equlibrium conditions. The same is not true of a static car.

cells are very complicated and living objects. When they die due to lack of a needed substance e.g. oxygen, death is irreversible. When one component of the complex cell mechanism crashes (in partical when it is the energy generation) then the whole cell crashes. Without ATP (produced with the help of oxygen), repair mechanisms, transcription, and ion transport for the ionic gradient etc can not work. When one gives the lacked substance a day later, the proteins are already destroyed. Without proteins no further ATP generation can happen (that is also needed for proteinproction -->transcription, translation). That is just one little example, what can happen. Because everything is strongly interconnected in a cell giving the needed substance now does not help. A car is not living and is by far not that complex as a cell. Therefore this analogy is not so appropriate.

Interesting articles on cells, oxygen, cold and how to treat the dead and raising the dead.

Well, if oxygen runs out in the brain, no neurotransmissions occur. No neurotransmissions = brain dead. Brain dead = organs shut down.

Cell like neurons also have glycoproteins which signals when they are to die. These signals play a huge role in cell survival. People who have been under frozen water for over an hour have been brought back because under cold temperatures, a single cell death would not trigger a domino effect of cell death.

Well, that's one way cells die, but I'm not sure about the others.

Originally Posted by neird

Without ATP (produced with the help of oxygen), repair mechanisms, transcription, and ion transport for the ionic gradient etc can not work. When one gives the lacked substance a day later, the proteins are already destroyed. Without proteins no further ATP generation can happen...

ATP can be produced anaerobically. But like AlexP states, this metabolic pathway produces lactic acid. At a low enough pH, sodium pumps on cell membranes are denatured, sodium can no longer be pumped from the cell so accumulates, the cell swells and ruptures its membrane, thus dying. Cooling works by slowing down the movement of sodium. I'm not sure whether the denaturing is reversible though... anyone know?

In theory, introducing an alkali should stop sodium pumps denaturing, and we do give sodium bicarbonate during arrests.

As for repurfusion injuries in jrmonroe's cool articles; i thought the insult was due to pro-inflammatory mediators, nothing to do with inappropriate apoptosis?

But anaerobically much less ATP is generated. Just 2 ATP per Glucose molecule. The aerobic pathway produces about 32 ATP. I think this is an important point. Aerobic cells are used to a high ATP amount and can not live long with a little ATP amount, I think.

I think the first article contains a passage according to which a cell did not appear to be damaged for about an hour or more. Maybe in the future it will be possible to inject a person that just died from lack of oxygen with some cocktail of chemicals that can restart the cells without destroying them and proceed to revive him?

Out of curiosity, if a body is revived put on artificial respirator and circulation etc, and new stem cells are injected in various areas, will these cells be able to survive for a short while and multiply?

If you had a SCI-FI scenario lets say 50 years from now, a machine like a MRI but that contained a tube with hundreds of cell injection machines with the speed and precision of a hard drive (thousands of manipulations per second) and this machine could inject a million healthy cells per second for several minutes in a body that had died from lack of oxygen but kept at low temperature(or something), could these healthy cells operating help restart part of the other oxygen deprived cells?

Originally Posted by icewendigo

I think the first article contains a passage according to which a cell did not appear to be damaged for about an hour or more. Maybe in the future it will be possible to inject a person that just died from lack of oxygen with some cocktail of chemicals that can restart the cells without destroying them and proceed to revive him?

Most of the cells in your body can go a while without oxygen and still live. People lose fingers all the time, put them on ice, and then have them sewn back on when they get to the hospital. The key issue is keeping it cool enough so it doesn't start to putrefy. Just like food that's not stored in a refrigerator, your severed body parts start to "spoil" if they're exposed for a long time to the air at room temperature. (So, technically, they're getting eaten by bacteria, because they can't defend themselves.)

Unfortunately, your brain can't go more than about 20 minutes without beginning to suffer permanent damage. Even if the doctors could fix all the cells, probably the data stored in them would be irrecoverable. Whatever they brought back, it wouldn't be "you" anymore.