Evolution of ageing as a tangle of trade-offs: energy versus function.

ABSTRACT: Despite tremendous progress in recent years, our understanding of the evolution of ageing is still incomplete. A dominant paradigm maintains that ageing evolves due to the competing energy demands of reproduction and somatic maintenance leading to slow accumulation of unrepaired cellular damage with age. However, the centrality of energy trade-offs in ageing has been increasingly challenged as studies in different organisms have uncoupled the trade-off between reproduction and longevity. An emerging theory is that ageing instead is caused by biological processes that are optimized for early-life function but become harmful when they continue to run-on unabated in late life. This idea builds on the realization that early-life regulation of gene expression can break down in late life because

SUBMITTER: Maklakov AA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6784717 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature