A short story about aging

Why do we age? What seems like a biological necessity is actually not. Single cell organisms in most cases could be called immortal although the definition is somewhat problematic since for most it is hard to distinguish between mother and daughter, between individual and a population of clones.

There are however also more complex life forms that are not aging as we do. The only really biological immortal animal we know of is the jellyfish Turritopsis dohrnii. It can rejuvenate itself by re-entering the polyp stage and re-emerging as a jellyfish. But there are also mammals that defy our traditional understanding of aging: The naked mole rat.

The naked mole rat is a funny animal through and through. They look like sausages with teeth that could use a dentist. They live underground in insect like states where only the queen is able to breed. Becoming the queen normally means beating the current queen in a bloody usurpation. They have an amazing immune system that basically completely protects them from illness, cancer and infection. And they do not age like we do.

Aging for us is mostly defined by a decrease in physical fitness, the slow loss of function of our bodies after the end of the reproductive phase. It is also an increase in mortality rate (the probability to die within a fixed amount of time). Naked mole rats however show neither an end to reproduction, a decrease in health or fitness nor an increase in mortality with age. That doesn’t mean that mole rats are immortal. On average they become 15 years old but that is mostly because of injuries from fights or predators.

If aging is not mandatory, why is it so common in nature? There are two main theories. The first is that aging is a genetic function that is selected evolutionary since it purges individuals after their reproductive phase which means when it doesn’t affect their evolutionary fitness anymore. However this is already the first problem with this theory. Why should something so consequently be selected in so many? An argument could be that it is an advantage to make room and save resources for your offspring but that’s not really realistic in this case. The selective pressure would be different depending on the scarcity of resources but life spans are not.

The second theory is aging is just an effect of wear and unrepairable damages that accumulate. So is a body just like a car that, no mater how much you put into into repairs at some point it’s not worth it anymore? Obviously this is a factor there are measurable accumulations especially in genomic damages and epigenetic deregulation.

What speaks clearly against pure random damage leading to biological aging, is that it has a clearly distinguishable phenotype. We all are able to tell if a person is old. This seems like there are biological integrators and common pathways activated by different kinds of damage. There are two kinds of those pathways. Those that repair or prevent the damage like stress responses. And those that in case the damage becomes too much and bears the risk of turning the cell into a cancer cell. Those can be programmed cell death in extreme cases but also senescence. Senescence means that cells permanently stop deviding behave differently but stay alive.

This is responsible for many of the observable phenotypes of old age. The more senescent cells an organ contains the older the whole organ behaves.

Back to the main question: Why do we age? The answer is, that we don’t know yet. It seems however that it is a mix of wear and tear that is integrated by molecular responses to the damage and a deregulation that is due to the loss of selective pressure after the end of the reproductive phase.

If you want a deeper dive into the topic from a scientific perspective a good starting point could be the review article by Shufei Song and F. Brad Johnson (2018).

In case you’re not sure how to get scientific publications without paying the horrendous sums many publishers charge for them, stay tuned there will be an article on this topic soon.