The Cell Biology of Aging

The cell biology of aging

One of the original hypotheses of organismal longevity posits that aging is the natural result of entropy on the cells, tissues, and organs of the animal--a slow, inexorable slide into nonfunctionality caused by stochastic degradation of its parts. We now have evidence that aging is instead at least in part genetically regulated. Many mutations have been discovered to extend lifespan in organis...

The Cell Biology of Aging

The distinction between the effects of aging as a chronological process and diseases whose prevalence increase with advancing age remains blurred. Conditions once thought to be inevitable companions of old age are now known to in fact be pathological in origin and thus possibly treatable and preventable. One example is senile dementia, no longer the mysterious fate of the very old, but often a ...

Cell biology. Twists in the tale of the aging yeast.

Aging and cancer cell biology, 2009.

Cancer is an age-related disease in organisms with renewable tissues. A malignant tumor arises in part from genomic damage, which can also drive age-related degeneration. However, cancer differs from many age-related degenerative diseases in that it entails gain-of-function changes that confer new (albeit aberrant) properties on cells, resulting in vigorous cell proliferation and survival. None...

Biology of Aging