Aging is a natural part of life, but that hasn't stopped people from embarking on efforts to stop the process. Unfortunately, perhaps, those attempts are futile, according to University of Arizona researchers who have proved that it's mathematically impossible to halt aging in multicellular organisms like humans. "Aging is mathematically inevitable - like, seriously inevitable. There's logically, theoretically, mathematically no way out," said Joanna Masel, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and at the UA.
Masel and UA postdoctoral researcher Paul Nelson outline their findings on math and aging in a new study titled "Intercellular Competition and Inevitability of Multicellular Aging," published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Current understanding of the evolution of aging leaves open the possibility that aging could be stopped if only science could figure out a way to make selection between organisms perfect. One way to do that might be to use competition between cells to eliminate poorly functioning "sluggish" cells linked to aging, while keeping other cells intact. However, the solution isn't that simple, Masel and Nelson say.
Two things happen to the body on a cellular level as it ages, Nelson explains. One is that cells slow down and start to lose function, like when your hair cells, for example, stop making pigment. The other thing that happens is that some cells crank up their growth rate, which can cause cancer cells to form. As we get older, we all tend, at some point, to develop cancer cells in the body, even if they're not causing symptoms, the researchers say. Masel and Nelson found that even if natural selection were perfect, aging would still occur, since cancer cells tend to cheat when cells compete.
https://phys.org/news/2017-10-mathematically-impossible-aging-scientists.html
[Abstract]: Intercellular competition and the inevitability of multicellular aging
So, either you die of old age or you die of cancer. Choose wisely !!
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday November 01 2017, @03:09AM
Energy definitely helps, but centuries ago if you got leprosy, or gonorrhea, or syphilis, or an un-specified infection from a deep wound, it didn't really matter how well off you were, you usually died. Same for premature births, so many birth defects that are moderated by modern methods, and all the other things that can fix up people long enough for them to reproduce when 50 years ago they would have just died before passing on their genes. (And, let's not turn this into a vaccine discussion, but...)
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