Aging

All systems are subject to aging. Besides cancer, understanding and controlling the aging process is a central problem of applied biology. Aging means the accumulation of changes in a system, organism or object over time. For organic lifeforms, the problems of aging are senescence (the general deterioration of the body with increasing age). It is still unclear why senescence — the general deterioration of vitality and resistance to adversity with advancing age — occurs and how it works. Reasons may be:

• normal wear and tear damage, damage that naturally and inevitably occurs in daily life
• accumulation of waste products that interfere with metabolism
• accumulation of mutations which violates the genetic integrity and gradually damage the genetic code
• suppression of mechanisms that prevent further regeneration (e.g. by shortened telomeres)

Links

• Wikipedia link for Aging