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Why evolution could never solve aging?
Maybe aging is an essential mechanism to clear out the old and make way for the new like cells within a body?
Maybe every form of life is already close to the upper limit of life expectancy?
Maybe aging is in the nature of carbon based life and metabolism?
Maybe we genetically sacrifice our longevity to survive the stresses of competition.
Emerging Questions:
Is it that our metabolic processes are over-compensated for dominance in their sexual prime which prove detrimental for longevity?
Is it that genes leading to different lifespans are mixed indefinitely in nature that it was never possible to select for it?
Isn't an organism with a longer span of mating at an advantage?
My hypothesis:
In the absence of change in ones environment, or competitive stresses an organism would eventually adapt itself to survive longer.
If every organism is a product of evolution then there must of course be underlying mechanisms within itself to aid such an adaptive process.
Under the influence of adaptive pressure, it would encourage mutation or variations in order create successful variations and also increase the number of life-cycles and so reducing the lifespan.
Under the influence of competitive stress, the dominance would lead to reproductive success and not the span of mating during ones lifespan.
In the absence of change in ones environment leading to adaptive pressure, or competitive stresses from rivals to prove dominance. Species would evolve longer lifespans.
Just a Theory though! But it would predict that
Lifespans of living fossils which have undergone little change in time should be greater than their relatives which have recently evolved.
Life having evolved on geographically isolated places far from intense competitive pressures should have greater lifespans.
Living things higher up in the food-chain or with few natural enemies should have greater lifespans.
Life span in pair bonding species should be higher than tournament species.
Ed Schulte 50+
anf that includes "aging" there would be no "evolution"
Nikolas Etzold
Bacteria basically life forever, since they only copy themselves. During that process some errors can sneak in which might make them more or less efficient at surviving or have no immediate effect at all. That leads to a slow evolution, which is ok as long as the population is as huge as bacteria populations are. Survival is pretty much luck since these organisms are so simple and therefore vulnerable to environmental conditions. Again their number helps the species to survive.
Sexual reproduction is another story. The possibility for change in the genome by mixing two of them instead of copying one is much higher, which leads to faster adaption and therefore bigger populations. Also the complexity of the organisms increases drastically. With higher complexity comes higher vulnerability to errors during the cloning process(a glass of water can destroy a computer, but not an abakus to use a simple allegory). these errors accumulate in multicellular organisms until they cease to function, which is called "aging". The errors in the process can happen randomly which is rare or be induced by environmental factors such as chemicals or radiaton.
In short: We age, because we are too complex to function longer than we do.
And to adress the longevity:
Every individual of a species has a lifespan that is high enough to reproduce and in some cases make sure the offspring survive. Anything else would be a waste of resources that would harm the population. This lifespan is determined by the environmental conditions and the sice of the organism. Big organisms that live long evolve in stable environments and have slow reproduction rates. Smaller organisms that live shorter evolve in less stable environments and have to reproduce faster.
In short: You live as long as you have to, but not longer, because nature can't afford to care about individuals
Martin Lu
Mike Euverman
The modern shark has been around for about 100 million years. If that isn't a long life span, then I don't know what is.
Evolution doesn't work on an individual scale. It works across entire species, and can solve the aging problem when you look at it from the perspective of a species, and not as an individual. I will die, but my children will live on. Presumably, they will have children, and those children will have children, and my genetics will continue to live on forever.
Carlos Rodriguez
Alistair Dunbar
As for aging you have to ask yourself is there really a significance currently to a longer period of sexual activity to your offspring surviving? How is that limited by things like the menopause and old men losing virilence? And does a longer period of sexual activity actually have any real statistically relavent effect upon the average number of children a person has.
I very much doubt a longer lifespan actually will contribute to the number of children produced in a western community with good sexual health education. A brief observation is that women are making choices about when to have children increasingly closer to the onset of menopause so they can accomplish a greater number of goals in their youth. If you expand the aging process in a means that produces a greater period of youth I can only conclude that women will continue to choose to have children closer to when the threat of not being able to ever have children compels a desire to do so.
Anuraag Reddy
There is also a tendency for son's of rich, successful older men having sons who have better chances of mating themselves.
Both should definitely be leading to longer lives at least among st humans.
Christine Lee
Without aging we'd have a harsh choice to make:
No new people
Or mandated 'exit strategy' for current people.
Either one is unfavorable vs. what we have.
Scott Redgrove
Thomas Anderson
Steve G
Some of your hypotheses seem to favor this kind of homogeneity - a problem is that it is a little self-contradictory to speak of evolution in an environment in which change becomes a non-factor. If such "favorable" conditions did occur, evolution would almost certainly stop too - thus nothing new, including new lifespans. (It is important to consider that while adaptation and mutation certainly will always be the condition of living things, the term "evolution" is almost always used to describe, only with 20/20 hindsight, such a mutation that we qualify as "good". Also, barring such ephemera as "the human ego", where is the evidence that living longer is an improvement? )
And importantly, if Evolution is your ruler, then measuring by that ruler indicates that the proper lifespan for each living entity = well.... it's current lifespan.)
Jesse Davey
Dylan F
Although the mechanisms responsible for aging are not exactly known, it is clear that it's a complex matter involving many different biochemical factors. To overcome such a feat by natural selection may simply be too improbable to ever occur or it may need not ever occur because of easier solutions (higher metabolism = shorter life, but more strength, speed, intelligence for more reproduction = more genes in the gene pool to favor shorter life).
But, on the other hand, evolution has stumbled upon a species capable of redesigning its very own nature with the potential of reaching conscious immortality. So maybe the question is "When will evolution solve the problem of aging?"
Anuraag Reddy
A likely possibility and well arrived at. :)
Ajay Appaden
And about the lines that we draw for the categorization of various things like your example of life, there is a line, just that it isn't a distinct line but a fuzzy line. In the words of Jane Goodall, "it's a very wuzzy line, and its getting wuzzier all the time". Ofcourse she was talking about the divide between humans and the rest of the animal kingdom. Yes classification is difficult and we have things that fall on either side and some that dont find a side to fall on, a typical example being the one stated by Tony in his first post, the Virus, it becomes inanimate when in harsh conditions and animate again when favourable conditions prevail.
To address the last issue you brought up, The religious being courageous enough...hmm.. hiding from simple facts of life and death and crediting an imaginary being for everything good that happens, then depending on the said being to give you presents if you're good... sounds very courageous indeed. I was religious, untill I started THINKING for MYSELF. never turned back ever since, because I get real answers from science and not answers like "That's just how it is" or "god did it".
Please look into the actual working of the Big Bang theory and quantum physics before you assert that real SCIENTIFIC theories are just made up by a bunch of people as fictional writing. I would suggest a reading of Hawking's 'A brief history of time'. Brilliantly written for the lay man to understand. You could watch his documentaries too if required (which I honestly feel might be required), and if you're even going to venture say that he's not qualified enough to talk on the topic, Im sorry my friend, I have nothing else to say to you.
Have a good day.
Dean Jacobson
Dustin vasseur
Ajay Appaden
Anuraag Reddy
Mutation accumulation theory: From the evolutionary perspective, aging is an inevitable result of the declining force of natural selection with age. For example, a mutant gene that kills young children will be strongly selected against (will not be passed to the next generation) while a lethal mutation with effects confined to people over the age of 80 will experience no selection because people with this mutation will have already passed it to their offspring by that age. Over successive generations, late-acting deleterious mutations will accumulate, leading to an increase in mortality rates late in life.
Antagonistic pleiotropy theory: Late-acting deleterious genes may even be favored by selection and be actively accumulated in populations if they have any beneficial effects early in life.
"If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough." ~ Einstien
A Good Read:
http://longevity-science.org/Evolution.htm
tishe Hires 10+
Juliet Gause
Mikhail Kravchenko
Alex Belovich
Gabo Moreno 100+
Evolution is a natural phenomenon, not an intelligent agent.
Simon Tutek
Dieing is a selection step within the process of evolution. If you would implement any of the evolutionary algorithms you would understand it better. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_algorithm
Human race managed to escape evolutionary pressure by not of adapting, instead we are changing our environment (irrigation, shelter, heating, clothing, sanitation etc.).
That being said, I still wish I would not have to die someday...
Hosai Parwa
Tj Green
Robertson Klaingar
I do agree that we would probably live longer if our environment was unchanging though. We would just evolve to an optimum stage and remain that way. But given that our environment is ever changing and that we are constantly confronted with new viruses, competition etc, it is only natural that there would be some regular 'pruning' going on to keep the amount of genes circulating abundant. If we were all the same, then mass deaths would be even more frequent.
I do wonder how species that live longer cope though.
Christianne Chin