Human Longevity: Nature vs. Nurture—Fact or Fiction

Ba, Carnes; Sj, Olshansky; Gavrilov, Leonid A.; Gavrilova, Natalia S.; Grahn, Douglas

doi:10.1353/pbm.1999.0023

Cited by 21 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 73 publications

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“…The results obtained in this study also explain the existing longevity paradox: although the heritability estimates for life span were reported to be rather low, 3,34,[37][38][39] it is well known that cases of extreme longevity have a strong familial association. [40][41][42][43] This paradox is explained by our finding that heritability of human life span is low only when studied in the whole range of parental life span (because most of the parents did not live long lives in historical populations studied so far), but is quite high when estimated specifically for longerlived parents.…”

Section: When Does Human Longevity Start? 121supporting

confidence: 69%

When Does Human Longevity Start?: Demarcation of the Boundaries for Human Longevity

Gavrilova¹,

Gavrilov²

2001

Journal of Anti-Aging Medicine

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The scientific debates on the future of human life span and its possible biological limits revealed a great need for direct identification of longevity boundaries, if they really exist. The key question posed in this study is as follows: how can we possibly determine the age when human longevity starts? To address this problem, we studied the familial transmission of human life span from parents to daughters, since daughters did not have a high incidence of violent causes of death due to military service and are particularly responsive to parental life span. We found that the familial transmission of human life span from mother to daughter is essentially nonlinear with virtually no daughter-mother life span resemblance for shorterlived mothers (died before age 85) and very high familial resemblance (additive heritability) for longer-lived mothers. This indicates that maternal age of 85 years could be considered as a demarcation point (lower boundary) for female longevity. Women who live above this age are fundamentally (presumably genetically) different from other women in the sense that their daughters live significantly longer. Thus, the age of 85 years could be considered as a threshold age when women mortality becomes much more selective. A similar study of familial transmission of human life span from father to daughter revealed a demarcation point at 75 years, suggesting that this age might represent a lower boundary for male longevity. These results are also consistent with predictions of the evolutionary theory of aging and mutation accumulation theory in particular, namely that the additive genetic variance for human life span should increase with parental longevity. In other words, human mortality should become more selective at advanced ages, and this prediction is confirmed in the present study. 115

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Section: When Does Human Longevity Start? 121supporting

confidence: 69%

When Does Human Longevity Start?: Demarcation of the Boundaries for Human Longevity

Gavrilova¹,

Gavrilov²

2001

Journal of Anti-Aging Medicine

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“…Following a long-standing tradition of biological thought, the search for a general biological theory to explain aging and longevity has been made mainly in terms of evolutionary biology (Medawar, 1946(Medawar, , 1952Williams, 1957Williams, , 1966Hamilton, 1966;Rose, 1991;Carnes & Olshansky, 1993;Charlesworth, 1994) and genetics (Finch, 1990;Jazwinski, 1996Jazwinski, , 1998Finch & Tanzi, 1997;Carnes et al, 1999). However, the attempts to explain &&late-life mortality plateaus'' using evolutionary theory (Mueller & Rose, 1996) have failed so far because they required highly specialized and unrealistic assumptions (see critical reviews by Charlesworth & Partridge, 1997;Pletcher & Curtsinger, 1998;Wachter, 1999).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Reliability Theory of Aging and Longevity

Gavrilov

Gavrilova

2001

Journal of Theoretical Biology

435

251

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Reliability theory is a general theory about systems failure. It allows researchers to predict the age-related failure kinetics for a system of given architecture (reliability structure) and given reliability of its components. Reliability theory predicts that even those systems that are entirely composed of non-aging elements (with a constant failure rate) will nevertheless deteriorate (fail more often) with age, if these systems are redundant in irreplaceable elements. Aging, therefore, is a direct consequence of systems redundancy. Reliability theory also predicts the late-life mortality deceleration with subsequent leveling-o!, as well as the late-life mortality plateaus, as an inevitable consequence of redundancy exhaustion at extreme old ages. The theory explains why mortality rates increase exponentially with age (the Gompertz law) in many species, by taking into account the initial -aws (defects) in newly formed systems. It also explains why organisms &&prefer'' to die according to the Gompertz law, while technical devices usually fail according to the Weibull (power) law. Theoretical conditions are speci"ed when organisms die according to the Weibull law: organisms should be relatively free of initial #aws and defects. The theory makes it possible to "nd a general failure law applicable to all adult and extreme old ages, where the Gompertz and the Weibull laws are just special cases of this more general failure law. The theory explains why relative di!erences in mortality rates of compared populations (within a given species) vanish with age, and mortality convergence is observed due to the exhaustion of initial di!erences in redundancy levels. Overall, reliability theory has an amazing predictive and explanatory power with a few, very general and realistic assumptions. Therefore, reliability theory seems to be a promising approach for developing a comprehensive theory of aging and longevity integrating mathematical methods with speci"c biological knowledge. Academic Press

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“…Longevity is also defined as length of life, but the primary definition in both the MerriamWebster and Oxford online dictionaries is a long duration of life. The latter meaning is important when examining the heritability of longevity which acknowledges the influence of genes (Carnes et al 1999).…”

Section: Lifespanmentioning

confidence: 99%

What is lifespan regulation and why does it exist?

Carnes

2011

Biogerontology

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The development of a unified conceptual framework for the field of biogerontology has been impeded by confusing and misleading terminology. Thus, distinctions and definitions are provided for key terms (and their concepts) used in the paper: senescence, lifespan, potential lifespan, essential lifespan, and lifespan regulation. An organismal perspective is then used to examine the relationships between reproduction, lifespan regulation and senescence. The principal conclusions drawn from this examination are: (1) the inevitability of death makes physiological investments in reproduction a higher priority than somatic maintenance, (2) the race between reproduction and death creates a probabilistic window of time (essential lifespan) within which reproduction must occur, (3) the integrated network of genetic processes responsible for achieving essential lifespan (lifespan regulation) must be evolutionarily conserved and extensively regulated, (4) senescence is a stochastic byproduct of these regulated processes rather than a direct target of natural selection, and (5) genomic instability (an important stochastic component of senescence) plays no active role in lifespan regulation.

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Human Longevity: Nature vs. Nurture—Fact or Fiction

Cited by 21 publications

References 73 publications

When Does Human Longevity Start?: Demarcation of the Boundaries for Human Longevity

When Does Human Longevity Start?: Demarcation of the Boundaries for Human Longevity

The Reliability Theory of Aging and Longevity

What is lifespan regulation and why does it exist?

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