Abstract
Homo sapiens and naked mole rats (Heterocephalus glaber) are vivid examples of social mammals that differ from their relatives in particular by an increased lifespan and a large number of neotenic features. An important fact for biogerontology is that the mortality rate of H. glaber (a maximal lifespan of more than 32 years, which is very large for such a small rodent) negligibly grows with age. The same is true for modern people in developed countries below the age of 60. It is important that the juvenilization of traits that separate humans from chimpanzees evolved over thousands of generations and millions of years. Rapid advances in technology resulted in a sharp increase in the life expectancy of human beings during the past 100 years. Currently, the human life expectancy has exceeded 80 years in developed countries. It cannot be excluded that the potential for increasing life expectancy by an improvement in living conditions will be exhausted after a certain period of time. New types of geroprotectors should be developed that protect not only from chronic phenoptosis gradual poisoning of the body with reactive oxygen species (ROS) but also from acute phenoptosis, where strong increase in the level of ROS immediately kills an already aged individual. Geroprotectors might be another anti-aging strategy along with neoteny (a natural physiological phenomenon) and technical progress.
Highlights
The nature of the selection factors underlying the evolution of aging remains controversial [1,2,3]
There is still no agreement among gerontologists as to the main aging-related issue: whether it is an accidental accumulation of damage in the organism or a result of the operation of a specially evolved program
It is still not clear whether aging is an inevitable phenomenon that is uncontrollable by organisms or whether it is a facultative adaptation that enhances the adaptive ability of species, i.e., their evolvability
Summary
The nature of the selection factors underlying the evolution of aging remains controversial [1,2,3]. This paper is devoted to a comparative analysis of the survival curves of humans and related primates and the possible role of neoteny and other mammalian antiaging programs in lifespan (LS) prolongation. Long-lived humans (Japanese and Swedes) and animals (southern fulmar) were classified as the species with the most pronounced aging, despite having a long period of a negligibly low mortality rate.
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