The Aging Gap Between Species

Aging is a puzzle to solve. This process is traditionally studied in a couple of biological models like fruit flies, worms and mice. What all these species have in common is their fast aging. This is excellent for lab budgets. It is a great short-term strategy. Who has time to study species that live for decades? But lifespan differences among species are magnitudes of order larger than any lifespan variation achieved in the lab. This is the reason for which I studied countless information resources in an attempt to gather highly specialized research into one easy-to-follow book. I wanted to see the forest among the trees. I wanted to expose the aging gap between species in an easy-to-follow and logical sequence. This book is my attempt at doing just that. What are the mechanisms underlying the aging gap between species? I intentionally chose to write the answer to this question in plain English. Aging research is too important to hide it behind the closed doors of formal scientific jargon. This book could not have existed if green tea, libraries and the Internet were not invented. The amount of data I had to browse in order to keep the essential patterns is huge. Yet this book is not exhaustive. This is not a dry academic textbook. I tried to instill life in a topic that is hugely important for the extension of human lifespan. Only you can decide if I achieved this. ********* TABLE OF CONTENTS *********** Finding the Forest Among the Trees Being Reliable Counts The Mathematics of Aging The Speed of Senescence Case Study: Aging in Fish How to Estimate Chronological Age Taking Life Slowly On Temperature and Aging Dormancy The Housekeeping Problem Case Study: Aging in Turtles Intracellular Junk Case Study: Aging in Crustaceans Extracellular Junk Case Study: Protein Quality Control The Sweet Poison Are Cell Membranes the Pacemakers of Metabolism? Could Reproduction Set up the Pacemaker of Senescence? The Segregation of Somatic and Germ Cells Clonal Senescence Versus Mechanical Senescence Same Species, Different Lifespans Case Study: Eusocial Species Case Study: Parasite/Free-Living Populations Case Study: Island Versus Inland Populations Hormones as Pacemakers of Senescence Case Study: Low Hormone Levels in Long-lived Rodents Is Aging a Form of Dehydration? The Immune Pacemaker of Senescence Innate Versus Adaptive Immunity Senescent Cells Case Study: Thymic Involution in Negligible Senescence Species Reverse Engineering the Body Case Study: Why Are Sponges Potentially Immortal? Modular Growth and Aging Case Study: Youth Is Forever Gone. Unless You Are a Hydra. Or an Immortal Jellyfish Down The Neoteny Lane Case Study: Neoteny in Amphibians Case Study: Neoteny in Mammals It's All About Neoteny Does Aging Start When Growth Stops? Case Study: Indeterminate Growth in Crustaceans The Rate of Growth Case Study: Aging in Bivalves Is Telomerase The New Fountain of Youth? Case Study: Same Species, Different Telomerase Expression Telomerase Gene Therapy Case Study: Sea Urchins Perennial Plants and Their Regenerating Roots Case Study: The Bristlecone Pine Unitary Versus Colonial Organisms Cancer The Paradox of Peto Case Study: Cancer in Long-Lived Species The End Acknowledgments Bibliography

Aging is a puzzle to solve. This process is traditionally studied in a couple of biological models like fruit flies, worms and mice. What all these species have in common is their fast aging. This is excellent for lab budgets. It is a great short-term strategy. Who has time to study species that live for decades? But lifespan differences among species are magnitudes of order larger than any lifespan variation achieved in the lab. This is the reason for which I studied countless information resources in an attempt to gather highly specialized research into one easy-to-follow book. I wanted to see the forest among the trees. I wanted to expose the aging gap between species in an easy-to-follow and logical sequence. This book is my attempt at doing just that. What are the mechanisms underlying the aging gap between species? I intentionally chose to write the answer to this question in plain English. Aging research is too important to hide it behind the closed doors of formal scientific jargon. This book could not have existed if green tea, libraries and the Internet were not invented. The amount of data I had to browse in order to keep the essential patterns is huge. Yet this book is not exhaustive. This is not a dry academic textbook. I tried to instill life in a topic that is hugely important for the extension of human lifespan. Only you can decide if I achieved this. Contents Finding the Forest Among the Trees Being Reliable Counts The Mathematics of Aging The Speed of Senescence Case Study: Aging in Fish How to Estimate Chronological Age Taking Life Slowly On Temperature and Aging Dormancy The Housekeeping Problem Case Study: Aging in Turtles Intracellular Junk Case Study: Aging in Crustaceans Extracellular Junk Case Study: Protein Quality Control The Sweet Poison Are Cell Membranes the Pacemakers of Metabolism? Could Reproduction Set up the Pacemaker of Senescence? The Segregation of Somatic and Germ Cells Clonal Senescence Versus Mechanical Senescence Same Species, Different Lifespans Case Study: Eusocial Species Case Study: Parasite/Free-Living Populations Case Study: Island Versus Inland Populations Hormones as Pacemakers of Senescence Case Study: Low Hormone Levels in Long-lived Rodents Is Aging a Form of Dehydration? The Immune Pacemaker of Senescence Innate Versus Adaptive Immunity Senescent Cells Case Study: Thymic Involution in Negligible Senescence Species Reverse Engineering the Body Case Study: Why Are Sponges Potentially Immortal? Modular Growth and Aging Case Study: Youth Is Forever Gone. Unless You Are a Hydra Down The Neoteny Lane Case Study: Neoteny in Amphibians Case Study: Neoteny in Mammals It's All About Neoteny Does Aging Start When Growth Stops? Case Study: Indeterminate Growth in Crustaceans The Rate of Growth Case Study: Aging in Bivalves Is Telomerase The New Fountain of Youth? Case Study: Same Species, Different Telomerase Expression Telomerase Gene Therapy Case Study: Sea Urchins Perennial Plants and Their Regenerating Roots Case Study: The Bristlecone Pine Unitary Versus Colonial Organisms Cancer The Paradox of Peto Case Study: Cancer in Long-Lived Species The End Acknowledgments Bibliography

The process of aging is familiar to, and usually dreaded by, all of us. We all know what it feels like to grow older, but what exactly is aging, why does it happen, and can anything be done to slow or prevent it? An original treatment of human aging that draws on biomedical research and the natural history of animals and plants, Aging: A Natural History describes this biological phenomenon in fascinating detail, helping the reader to understand its complex processes. In the aging patterns of humans and many other species, biologists Robert E. Ricklefs and Caleb E. Finch find some answers to why aging must exist at all, and why it is so spectacularly different in different species. The authors ask a variety of compelling questions: How can processes that lead to death be such an integral part of life itself? Why do some species tend to die at an early age when close relatives may live much longer? Why do many species age, when others seem not to? And, perhaps most importantly, why is aging, which is so detrimental to the individual, maintained by natural selection? Finally, the authors consider the prospects for prolonging human life and improving the quality of life at older ages. Concluding that aging is induced both by environmental factors and by the biochemical processes normally present in all cells, they show aging to be an inevitable yet alterable part of life - a natural process that may limit activity but is not necessarily debilitating.

This text analyzes the structure of fish populations in inland reservoirs, based on absolute values of their mass. The structure of population and its changes have been examined in seven fish species from small lakes, two from large lakes and seven from large reservoirs in plains. Special attention has been paid to the main indicator of the structure of population-correlation between the age of ichthyomass and mass maturation.

The marmoset, a type of small monkey native to South America, is a research model of increasing importance for biomedical research in the United States and globally. Marmosets offer a range of advantages as animal models in neuroscience, aging, infectious diseases, and other fields of study. They may be particularly useful for the development of new disease models using genetic engineering and assisted reproductive technologies. However, concerns have been voiced with respect to the development of new marmoset-based models of disease, ethical considerations for their use, the supply of marmosets available for research, and gaps in guidance for their care and management. To explore and address these concerns, the Roundtable on Science and Welfare in Laboratory Animal Use hosted a public workshop on October 22-23, 2018, in Washington, DC. The workshop focused on the availability of marmosets in the United States and abroad; animal welfare and ethical considerations stemming from the use of wildtype and genetically modified marmosets; and standards of housing and care, dietary needs, and feeding requirements for marmosets in captivity. This publication summarizes the presentations and discussions from the workshop.

This volume brings together noted scientists who study presbycusis from the perspective of complementary disciplines, for a review of the current state of knowledge on the aging auditory system. Age-related hearing loss (ARHL) is one of the top three most common chronic health conditions affecting individuals aged 65 years and older. The high prevalence of age-related hearing loss compels audiologists, otolaryngologists, and auditory neuroscientists alike to understand the neural, genetic and molecular mechanisms underlying this disorder. A comprehensive understanding of these factors is needed so that effective prevention, intervention, and rehabilitative strategies can be developed to ameliorate the myriad of behavioral manifestations.

Three main factors affect the quality and composition of meat in farm animals. Production conditions determine the composition of the meat, while marketing and postmortem periods have a major bearing on the visual appearance and ultimate eating experience for the consumer. It is often difficult to compare research results from different countries since meat quality is assessed by a wide variety of procedures. Quality and Grading of Carcasses of Meat Animals reviews the development of commercial grading or classification schemes on a world-wide basis, and it provides a broad outline of the most common subjective and objective procedures for the assessment of meat quality. The book provides reviews on: Ante- and post-mortem effects on meat quality Reducing fatness in meat animals Prediction of carcass composition and meat quality World carcass and grading systems Electronic identification of animals