CAN WE OUTLIVE METHUSELAH?

Abstract

It is easy to forget it, but we all came into the world looking quite differently from how we now look. From the single, fertilized egg cell we made it through embryogenesis and puberty to adulthood, when the slow but relentless corporal deterioration that we call aging began to become evident. Even though aging is one of the facts of human life we can count on, it is interesting to ponder its causes and whether it is possible to slow it down. In this essay we submit that a major cause of aging is the accumulation of errors (mutations) in the genome. The rate with which we accumulate mutations will determine the rate of aging. We argue that the error rate is in part determined by environmental factors, but predominantly by intrinsic events such as the introduction and repair of errors during DNA replication. The error rate is not a physical constant; it is a characteristic of our species. We suggest that by applying recombinant DNA techniques, we can greatly reduce the human mutation rate and thereby live...