Related papers: Change and Aging Senescence as an adaptation
The question of why we age is a fundamental one. It is about who we are, and it also might have critical practical aspects as we try to find ways to age slower. Or to not age at all. Different reasons point at distinct strategies for the…
At any moment in time, evolution is faced with a formidable challenge: refining the already highly optimised design of biological species, a feat accomplished through all preceding generations. In such a scenario, the impact of random…
Aging is thought to be a consequence of intrinsic breakdowns in how genetic information is processed. But mounting experimental evidence suggests that aging can be slowed. To help resolve this mystery, I derive a mortality equation which…
Existing theories for the evolution of aging and death treat senescence as a side-effect of strong selection for fertility. These theories are well-developed mathematically, but fit poorly with emerging experimental data. The data suggest…
We model evolution of plants in a world, made up of different locations, with multiple environments (mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive subsets of locations). Each environment (landmass) has temperature, rainfall, and other…
Although species longevity is subject to a diverse range of selective forces, the mortality curves of a wide variety of organisms are rather similar. We argue that aging and its universal characteristics may have evolved by means of a…
Many life-history traits, like the age at maturity or adult longevity, are important determinants of the generation time. For instance, semelparous species whose adults reproduce once and die have shorter generation times than iteroparous…
Competition between individuals drives the evolution of whole species. Although the fittest individuals survive the longest and produce the most offspring, in some circumstances the resulting species may not be optimally fit. Here, using…
Effective multicellularity requires both cooperation and competition between constituent cells. Cooperation involves sacrificing individual fitness in favor of that of the community, but excessive cooperation makes the community susceptible…
Death has long been overlooked in evolutionary algorithms. Recent research has shown that death (when applied properly) can benefit the overall fitness of a population and can outperform sub-sections of a population that are "immortal" when…
Biological aging is characterized by an age-dependent increase in the probability of death and by a decrease in the reproductive capacity. Individual age-dependent rates of survival and reproduction have a strong impact on population…
The paper discusses a connection between asymmetric reproduction -- that is reproduction in a parent-child relationship where the parent does not mutate during reproduction --, the fact that all non-viral lifeforms bear genes of their…
Biological evolution continuously refines the design of species, resulting in highly optimised organisms over hundreds of millennia. Intuitively, we expect that random changes-evolution's primary mechanism-are more likely to be harmful than…
Aging is a fundamental aspect of living systems that undergo a progressive deterioration of physiological function with age and an increase of vulnerability to disease and death. Living systems, known as complex systems, require complexity…
Many theories have been proposed to answer two questions on aging: "Why do we age?" and "How do we age?" Among them, evolutionary theories are proposed to interpret the evolutionary advantage of aging, and "saving resources for group…
Genetic information and environmental factors determine the path of an individuals life and therefore, the evolution of its entire species. We have succeeded in proposing and studying a model that captures this idea. In our model, a…
Mortality is an instrument of natural selection. Evolutionary motivated theories imply its irreversibility and life history dependence. This is inconsistent with mortality data for protected populations. Accurate analysis yields mortality…
Which factors govern the evolution of mutation rates and emergence of species? Here, we address this question using a first principles model of life where population dynamics of asexual organisms is coupled to molecular properties and…
Aging is a universal consequence of life, yet researchers have identified no universal theme. This manuscript considers aging from the perspective of entropy, wherein things fall apart. We first examine biological information change as a…
We study the dynamics of an age-structured population in which the life expectancy of an offspring may be mutated with respect to that of its parent. When advantageous mutation is favored, the average fitness of the population grows…