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Mar 22, 2024 5:53 pm
REVIEW
Biological Clocks: Why We Need Them,
Why We Cannot Trust Them,
How They Might Be Improved
Josh Mitteldorf Philadelphia, USAaging.advice@gmail.comReceived December 22, 2023 Revised February 5, 2024
(14) (PDF)
(14) (PDF)
Biological Clocks: Why We Need Them, Why We Cannot Trust Them, How They Might Be Improved. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/379112567_Biological_Clocks_Why_We_Need_Them_Why_We_Cannot_Trust_Them_How_They_Might_Be_Improved [accessed Mar 22 2024].
HISTORICAL CONTEXT OF ADAPTIVE AGING In the twentieth century, evolutionary theory based on the “selfish gene” model of neo-Darwinis misguided understanding of the cause and the mechanisms of aging in the animal kingdom. Aging has been regarded as a passive accumulation of damage, result-ing from a selection shadow at late ages (accumulated mutations [1]) or as an unavoidable side-effect ofselection pressure for maximal fertility (antagonistic pleiotropy [2]). Late in the century, a few visionary re-searchers had the courage to challenge these theoretical paradigms based on observation and experiment; there are aspects of the phenomenology of aging that defy predictions of theory based on accumulated mutations or antagonistic pleiotropy. The oldest and most robust intervention for extending lifespan is caloric restriction(CR), and the CR phenomenon does not fit well with either of the two classical theoretical models [3, 4]. Most obviously, life extension flies in the face of the popular disposable soma theory [5], which posits that aging is caused by a need to budget food-derived energy [6].The earliest proponents of aging as an evolved adaptation were Libertini [7], Bowles [8], and Skulachev[9]. There is now an abundance of plausible, published models capable of explaining when and how natural se-lection might prefer a fixed lifespan to an indeterminate lifespan [10-16]. The conservative scientific community avoided discussion of this challenge to neo-Darwinian evolution, and the first suggestion of adaptive aging to appear in a high-profile Western journal was [17].In my opinion, the most plausible and general models for evolution of aging are based on Gilpin’s* population dynamics [15, 18] Others are based on dispersion[19], on shortening the generation time to increase thepace of evolutionary adaptation [20], and on
(14) (PDF) Biological Clocks: Why We Need Them, Why We Cannot Trust Them, How They Might Be Improved. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/379112567_Biological_Clocks_Why_We_Need_Them_Why_We_Cannot_Trust_Them_How_They_Might_Be_Improved [accessed Mar 22 2024].
(14) (PDF) Biological Clocks: Why We Need Them, Why We Cannot Trust Them, How They Might Be Improved. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/379112567_Biological_Clocks_Why_We_Need_Them_Why_We_Cannot_Trust_Them_How_They_Might_Be_Improved [accessed Mar 22 2024].
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