Conceptual Breakthroughs In The Evolutionary Biology Of Aging

Conceptual Breakthroughs in the Evolutionary Biology of Aging continues the innovative Conceptual Breakthroughs series by providing a comprehensive outline of the major breakthroughs that built the evolutionary biology of aging as a leading scientific field. Following the evolutionary study of aging from its humble origins to the present, the book's chapters treat the field’s breakthroughs one at a time. Users will find a concise and accessible analysis of the science of aging viewed through an evolutionary lens. Building upon widely-cited studies conducted by author Michael Rose, this book covers 30 subsequent years of growth and development within the field.The book highlights key publications for those who are not experts in the field, providing an important resource for researchers. Given the prevailing interest in changing the aging process dramatically, it is a powerful tool for readers who have a vested interest in understanding its causes and future control measures. Reviews cell-molecular theories of aging in the light of evolutionary biology Offers an evolutionary analysis of prospects for mitigating aging not commonly discussed within private and public sectors Provides readers with a radically different perspective on contemporary biological gerontology, specifically through the lens of evolutionary biology

This unique book looks at the biology of aging from a fundamentally new perspective, one based on evolutionary theory rather than traditional concepts which emphasize molecular and cellular processes. The basis for this approach lies in the fact that natural selection, as a powerful determining force, tends to decline in importance with age. Many of the characteristics we associate with aging, the author argues, are more the result of this decline than any mechanical imperative contained within organic structures. This theory in turn yields the most fruitful avenues for seeking answers to the problem of aging, and should be recognized as the intellectual core of gerontology and the foundation for future research. The author ably surveys the vast literature on aging, presenting mathematical, experimental, and comparative findings to illustrate and support the central thesis. The result is the first complete synthesis of this vital field. Evolutionary biologists, gerontologists, and all those concerned with the science of aging will find it a stimulating, strongly argued account.

In this provocative book on the process of growing old, Michael Rose goes right to the heart of the fundamental "unsolved problem" of biology. Why do we grow old? The proposed theory is that to understand aging we must understand its evolution; only then do its taxonomic distribution and its genetic and physiological mechanisms become intelligible. Evidence is produced from the fields of cell biology, physiology, and gerontology.

The author of this monograph proposes an evolutionary theory of senescence - that the force of natural selection declines proportionally with age after the onset of reproduction. He elaborates with evidence from cell biology, physiology and gerontology.

Although biologists recognize evolutionary ecology by name, many only have a limited understanding of its conceptual roots and historical development. Conceptual Breakthroughs in Evolutionary Ecology fills that knowledge gap in a thought-provoking and readable format. Written by a world-renowned evolutionary ecologist, this book embodies a unique blend of expertise in combining theory and experiment, population genetics and ecology. Following an easily-accessible structure, this book encapsulates and chronologizes the history behind evolutionary ecology. It also focuses on the integration of age-structure and density-dependent selection into an understanding of life-history evolution. Covers over 60 seminal breakthroughs and paradigm shifts in the field of evolutionary biology and ecology Modular format permits ready access to each described subject Historical overview of a field whose concepts are central to all of biology and relevant to a broad audience of biologists, science historians, and philosophers of science

The conquest of aging is now within our grasp. It hasn't arrived yet, writes Michael R. Rose, but a scientific juggernaut has started rolling and is picking up speed. A long tomorrow is coming. In The Long Tomorrow, Rose offers us a delightfully written account of the modern science of aging, spiced with intriguing stories of his own career and leavened with the author's engaging sense of humor and rare ability to make contemporary research understandable to nonscientists. The book ranges from Rose's first experiments while a graduate student--counting a million fruit fly eggs, which took 3,000 hours over the course of a year--to some of his key scientific discoveries. We see how some of his earliest experiments helped demonstrate that "the force of natural selection" was key to understanding the aging process--a major breakthrough. Rose describes how he created the well-known Methuselah Flies, fruit flies that live far longer than average. Equally important, Rose surveys the entire field, offering colorful portraits of many leading scientists and shedding light on research findings from around the world. We learn that rodents given fifteen to forty percent fewer calories live about that much longer, and that volunteers in Biosphere II, who lived on reduced caloric intake for two years, all had improved vital signs. Perhaps most interesting, we discover that aging hits a plateau and stops. Popular accounts of Rose's work have appeared in The New Yorker, Time magazine, and Scientific American, but The Long Tomorrow is the first full account of this exciting new science written for the general reader. "Among his peers, Rose is considered a brilliantly innovative scientist, who has almost single-handedly brought the evolutionary theory of aging from an abstract notion to one of the most exciting topics in science."--Malcolm Gladwell, The New Yorker

Does Aging Stop? shatters the conventional beliefs on which aging research has been based for the last fifty years.

Aging is one of those subjects that many biologists feel is largely unknown. Therefore, they often feel comfortable offering extremely facile generalizations that are either unsupported or directly refuted in the experimental literature. Despite this unfortunate precedent, aging is a very broad phenomenon that calls out for integration beyond the mere collecting together of results from disparate laboratory organisms. With this in mind, Part One offers several different synthetic perspectives. The editors, Rose and Finch, provide a verbal synthesis of the field that deliberately attempts to look at aging from both sides, the evolutionary and the molecular. The articles by Charlesworth and Clark both provide population genetic perspectives on aging, the former more mathematical, the latter more experimental. Bell takes a completely different approach, arguing that aging may not be the result of evolutionary forces. Bell's model instead proposes that aging could arise from the progressive deterioration of chronic host pathogen interactions. This is the first detailed publication of this model. It marks something of a return to the type of aging theories that predominated in the 1950's and 1960's, theories like the somatic mutation and error catastrophe theories. We hope that the reader will be interested by the contrast in views between the articles based on evolutionary theory and that of Bell. MR. Rose and C. E. Finch (eds. ), Genetics and Evolution of Aging, 5-12, 1994. © 1994 Kluwer Academic Publishers. The J aniform genetics of aging 2 Michael R. Rosel & Caleb E.