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Evolutionary Origins of Aging

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The Future of Aging

Abstract

How we search for anti-aging interventions depends on what we think aging is. Surprisingly, the origin and significance of aging are unresolved questions of evolutionary theory, because experiments have diverged starkly from theoretical expectations. If we think that aging is a process of stochastic degradation, then we seek interventions that will repair the damage. If we think aging is a side-effect of fertility, we may look at ways that fertility hormones can be manipulated. But if we think that aging is an independent genetic program, with no other purpose than to assure our demise, then the most effective approach will be to discover what clocks trigger the self-destruction, and to seek interventions that reset the body’s primary clocks.

Much evolutionary theory has been developed based on the premise that fitness is a property of the individual organism. Since aging contributes negatively to individual fitness, theoreticians have insisted that aging cannot be adaptive. Contrary to this expectation, a robust and diverse body of experimental evidence points to the fact that aging has indeed evolved as an independent adaptation, selected for its own sake.

The implications for aging medicine are remarkable. First, that the prospects for success are good, and, in fact, the quest might not be terribly difficult. Aging is a process that is tightly regulated by biochemical signals. Targeting key receptors in this pathway is a research program that may be feasible over the next few years. Elsewhere in this volume are examples of promising approaches. Second, that natural healing traditions, herbs and whole foods are unlikely to be effective for slowing the rate of aging. Natural foods and medicines may restore some ancestral conditions under which the body was optimized in our evolutionary past; but if a programmed life span is part of that optimization, then natural remedies will have little effect on aging.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In populations that are at or near their density limit, competition is sufficiently intense that offspring (small and undeveloped) rarely grow to maturity unless an older conspecific dies or migrates, creating a vacancy. It is in this sense that senescence can contribute to a higher population turnover, and a shorter effective generation cycle.

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  1. Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, 85720, USA

    Joshua Mitteldorf

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  1. Intervene Biomedical, LLC, Box 478, Norco, CA, 92860, USA

    Gregory M. Fahy

  2. BioTime, Inc., 1301 Harbor Bay Parkway, Alameda, CA, 94502, USA

    Michael D. West

  3. Institute of Molecular Biology Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry Young Hall, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, 90095-1569, USA

    L. Stephen Coles

  4. Critical Care Research, Inc., 10743 Civic Center Drive, Rancho Cucamonga, CA, 91730, USA

    Steven B. Harris

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Mitteldorf, J. (2010). Evolutionary Origins of Aging. In: Fahy, G.M., West, M.D., Coles, L.S., Harris, S.B. (eds) The Future of Aging. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-3999-6_5

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