Solution of Aging

Abstract

The primary purpose of this paper is to identify the main cause of aging (in humans) and to propose a means to solve life's ultimate problem. The author defines aging as a gradual decline in functional performance and assumes that it is connected with changes in genetic code. In order to identify the primary cause of aging, it is necessary to compare the genomes of young organisms to those of old organisms to determine how they differ. Despite much fanfare and attention that has largely been focused in recent years on telomeres and point mutations, it is unlikely that aging is directly caused by either. What is far more likely is that it is connected with a gene loss (rDNA etc.) in postmitotic cells -- which was proposed by B.L. Strehler in 1986. Somehow Strehler's theory of aging was forgotten, probably due to his mistaken identification of a primary loss mechanism (through homologous recombination between identical genes on the same chromosome that resolves as crossover and results in the excision of a gene with the production of circular DNA -- or ERC, in case with rDNA). Since ERC were not detected in organisms other than yeast, it probably was assumed that aging in complex eucaryotes had nothing to do with gene loss. Such reasoning is erroneous -- it deals with falsification of a proposed mechanism of excision, but it doesn't (and possibly cannot) falsify the objective evidence of gene loss that was demonstrated by Strehler. The author points out that there is another mechanism that can explain gene loss -- single strand annealing (SSA). It is necessary to try to falsify that gene loss is a primary cause of aging by finding an absence of correlation between premature aging and accelerated gene loss. If this falsification fails, then the problem of gene loss can be solved by at least three viable methods involving molecular biology: SSA replacement, USCR-like gene amplification, viral vector gene delivery. A solution to this proposed primary cause of aging should, in theory, result in the solution of aging.