Discovering the mechanisms of plant longevity to fight human aging and age related diseases

Abstract

Aging is one of the most complex and challenging problems in biology. Therefore, many models from yeast to mammals are widely used to discover the mechanisms of human aging in order to postpone it and prevent age related diseases. According to the evolutionary theory of aging [1], natural selection only affected early life traits like fitness and reproduction, due to predation and accidents that prevent the becoming old of animals in the wild. But it likely failed to prevent late life phenotypes like aging and even contributed or caused them by antagonistic pleiotropy. In contrast to animals, plants, especially trees, live in a protected environment and are not subject to predation. This should have allowed natural selection to prevent late life's deleterious effects in at least some plants. The presence of very long living tree species like Pinus longaeva that lives up to 5000 years [2] and 9550 years old spruce which is the oldest living tree [3], suggest that natural selection has found a way to prevent aging. In this study, the present literature on plant longevity and senescence was scrutinized and a working frame including leaf senescence [4] and seed longevity [5] was described for further studies. The wide range health benefits of pycnogenol [6], a bark extract of pine that is also a long living tree, gives the hope to discover other phytochemicals ensuring plant longevity from especially oldest living plants that have the potential to be weapons in our war against aging and age associated diseases.