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Genes and environment in successful and unsuccessful aging
Author(s) -
Martin George M
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
geriatrics and gerontology international
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.823
H-Index - 57
eISSN - 1447-0594
pISSN - 1444-1586
DOI - 10.1111/j.1447-0594.2004.00137.x
Subject(s) - longevity , affect (linguistics) , evolutionary biology , genetics , medicine , biology , psychology , communication
Only about one quarter of human longevity is heritable; the rest of the variance is attributable to environment and to stochastic events. The environment includes ‘segmental gerontogens’ (e.g. tobacco smoke) that affect multiple senescent phenotypes, as well as ‘unimodal gerontogens’ (e.g. UV) that affect aging of a single tissue. Research on both ‘gerontogens’ and ‘gerontogenes’ will help us understand the differences between successful and unsuccessful human aging. Nature fails to eliminate gene variants with bad late life actions and also fails to select novel alleles with good late life actions. A classification of such gene actions predicts roles for numerous genes. 1,2 But there is evidence that single gene mutations and a single environmental manipulation (caloric restriction) can enhance longevity. These interventions impact upon ancient genetic programs (‘diapauses’) that couple environmental changes that threaten reproductive success with transient withdrawals from reproduction. Such a ‘reprieve’ (‘shikko‐yuyo’), however, cannot escape the dominating mechanisms predicted by the evolutionary theory of aging which, despite recent challenges, still provides the best explanation for why we age. The identification of multiple genes and environmental agents, both good and bad, that contribute to successful or unsuccessful aging in various settings should help elucidate basic mechanisms of biological aging.