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Programmed and altruistic ageing

Nature Reviews Genetics volume 6, pages 866–872 (2005)Cite this article

Abstract

Ageing is widely believed to be a non-adaptive process that results from a decline in the force of natural selection. However, recent studies in Saccharomyces cerevisiae are consistent with the existence of a programme of altruistic ageing and death. We suggest that the similarities between the molecular pathways that regulate ageing in yeast, worms, flies and mice, together with evidence that is consistent with programmed death in salmon and other organisms, raise the possibility that programmed ageing or death can also occur in higher eukaryotes.

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Figure 1: Computational simulations of stochastic and programmed ageing in Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

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Acknowledgements

We thank C. E. Finch for careful review of the manuscript and helpful suggestions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. the Andrus Gerontology Center and Department of Biological Sciences, University of Southern California, 3715 McClintock Avenue, Los Angeles, 90089, California, USA

    Valter D. Longo

  2. Department of Statistics, the Temple University, Ambler, 19002, Pennsylvania, USA

    Joshua Mitteldorf

  3. the Belozersky Institute of Physico-Chemical Biology, Moscow State University, Moscow, 119992, Russia

    Vladimir P. Skulachev

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  1. Valter D. Longo
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  2. Joshua Mitteldorf
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  3. Vladimir P. Skulachev
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Correspondence to Valter D. Longo.

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age-1

daf-2

RAS2

SOD1

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Longo, V., Mitteldorf, J. & Skulachev, V. Programmed and altruistic ageing. Nat Rev Genet 6, 866–872 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrg1706

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