Paper detail

Traditional aging theories: which ones are useful?

Many theories have been proposed to answer two questions on aging: "Why do we age?" and "How do we age?" Among them, evolutionary theories are proposed to interpret the evolutionary advantage of aging, and "saving resources for group benefit" is thought to be the purpose of aging. However for saving resources, a more economic strategy should be to make a rapid death to the individuals who are over the reproduction age rather than to make them aging. Biological theories are proposed to identify the causes and the biological processes of aging. However, some theories including cell senescence/telomere theory, gene-controlling theory, and developmental theory, have unfortunately ignored the influence of damage on aging. Free-radical theory suggests that free radicals by causing intrinsic damage are the main cause of aging. However, even if intracellular free radicals cause injuries, they could be only associated with some but not all of the aging changes. Damage (fault)-accumulation theory predicts that faults as intrinsic damage can accumulate and lead to aging. However, in fact an unrepaired fault could not possibly remain in a living organism, since it can destroy the integrity of tissue structure and cause rapid failure of the organism. These traditional theories are all incomplete on interpreting aging phenomena. Nevertheless, developmental theory and damage (fault)-accumulation theory are more useful, because they have recognized the importance of damage and development process in aging. Some physical theories are useful, because they point out the common characteristics of aging changes, including loss of complexity, consequence of increase of entropy, and failure of information-transmission. An advanced theory, which can include all of these useful ideas in traditional theories, is needed.