Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2010 Jan 12;365(1537):147-54.
doi: 10.1098/rstb.2009.0222.

The new biology of ageing

Affiliations

The new biology of ageing

Linda Partridge. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. .

Abstract

Human life expectancy in developed countries has increased steadily for over 150 years, through improvements in public health and lifestyle. More people are hence living long enough to suffer age-related loss of function and disease, and there is a need to improve the health of older people. Ageing is a complex process of damage accumulation, and has been viewed as experimentally and medically intractable. This view has been reinforced by the realization that ageing is a disadvantageous trait that evolves as a side effect of mutation accumulation or a benefit to the young, because of the decline in the force of natural selection at later ages. However, important recent discoveries are that mutations in single genes can extend lifespan of laboratory model organisms and that the mechanisms involved are conserved across large evolutionary distances, including to mammals. These mutations keep the animals functional and pathology-free to later ages, and they can protect against specific ageing-related diseases, including neurodegenerative disease and cancer. Preliminary indications suggest that these new findings from the laboratory may well also apply to humans. Translating these discoveries into medical treatments poses new challenges, including changing clinical thinking towards broad-spectrum, preventative medicine and finding novel routes to drug development.

PubMed Disclaimer

Similar articles

Cited by

References

    1. Baudisch A.2005Hamilton's indicators of the force of selection. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 102, 8263–8268 (doi:10.1073/pnas.0502155102) - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Bluher M., Kahn B., Kahn C.2003Extended longevity in mice lacking the insulin receptor in adipose tissue. Science 299, 572–574 (doi:10.1126/science.1078223) - DOI - PubMed
    1. Brown-Borg H. M., Borg K. E., Meliska C. J., Bartke A.1996Dwarf mice and the ageing process. Nature 384, 33 (doi:10.1038/384033a0) - DOI - PubMed
    1. Butler R. N., et al. 2008New model of health promotion and disease prevention for the 21st century. BMJ 337, a399 (doi:10.1136/bmj.a399) - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Chapman T., Partridge L.1996Female fitness in Drosophila melanogaster: an interaction between the effect of nutrition and of encounter rate with males. Proc. Biol. Sci. 263, 755–759 (doi:10.1098/rspb.1996.0113) - DOI - PubMed