Magnitude and significance of the peak of early embryonic mortality

Chen, Qinghua; Di, Zengru; García‐Roger, Eduardo M.; Li, Hui; Richmond, Peter; Roehner, Bertrand M.

doi:10.1007/s10867-020-09555-4

Cited by 6 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 31 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…In the case of early mortality [28], elements such as aortic valves are one such structural element. This presumably depends on genetics that determine the assembly process in the womb; mortality in later age can be linked to the strength of the immune system [29,30].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Physical models of infant mortality: implications for defects in biological systems

et al. 2020

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Reliability engineering concerned with failure of technical inanimate systems usually uses vocabulary and notions of human mortality, e.g. infant mortality vs. senescence mortality. Yet few data are available to support such a parallel description. Here we focus on early stage (infant) mortality for two inanimate systems, incandescent light bulbs and soap films, and show the parallel description is clearly valid. Theoretical considerations of the thermoelectrical properties of electrical conductors allows us to link bulb failure to inherent mechanical defects. We then demonstrate the converse, that is, knowing the failure rate for an ensemble of light bulbs, it is possible to deduce the distribution of defects in wire thickness in the ensemble. Using measurements of lifetimes for soap films we show how this methodology links failure rate to geometry of the system; in the case presented this is the length of the tube containing the films. In a similar manner, for a third example, the time-dependent death rate due to congenital aortic valve stenosis is related to the distribution of degrees of severity of this condition, as a function of time. The results not only validate clearly the parallel description noted above, but point firmly to application of the methodology to humans, with the consequent ability to gain more insight into the role of abnormalities in infant mortality.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Physical models of infant mortality: implications for defects in biological systems

et al. 2020

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…It has been shown recently [10] that for zebrafish 3 the embryonic death rate is by far highest at the beginning of the embryogenesis, an observation which suggests that most of these deaths are due to mistakes in the manufacturing processes of the oocyte (femelle egg) and sperm cell. If instead the deaths would be due to mutations during the embryogenesis they would be uniformly distributed or even (through a cumulative effect) concentrated in the late phase of embryogenesis.…”

Section: Common Characteristics Of Embryonic and Infancy Death Ratesmentioning

confidence: 99%

A joint explanation of infant and old age mortality

Richmond¹,

Roehner²

2021

Preprint

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Infant deaths and old age deaths are very different. The former are mostly due to severe congenital malformations of one or a small number of specific organs. On the contrary, old age deaths are largely the outcome of a long process of deterioration which starts in the 20s and affects almost all organs. In terms of age-specific death rates, there is also a clear distinction: the infant death rate falls off with age, whereas the adult and old age death rate increases exponentially with age in conformity with Gompertz's law. An additional difference is that whereas aging and old age death have been extensively studied, infant death received much less attention. To our knowledge the two effects have never been inter-connected. Clearly, it would be satisfactory to explain the two phenomena as being two variants within the same explanatory framework. In other words, a mechanism providing a combined explanation for the two forms of mortality would be welcome. This is the purpose of the present paper. We show here that the same biological effects can account for the two cases provided there is a difference in their severity: death triggered by isolated lethal anomalies in one case and widespread wear-out anomalies in the second. We show that quite generally this mechanism leads indeed, respectively, to a declining and an upgoing death rate. Moreover, this theoretical framework leads to the conjecture that the severity of the death effects, whether in infancy or old age, are higher for organisms which are comprised of a larger number of organs. Finally, let us observe that the main focus of the paper is the drastic difference of the age-specific death rates (i.e. decreasing versus increasing) because this difference is found in many species, whereas the question of the best fit (e.g. Gompertz versus Weibull) is rather specific to human mortality.

show abstract

A joint explanation of infant and old age mortality

Richmond

Roehner

2021

J Biol Phys

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Magnitude and significance of the peak of early embryonic mortality

Cited by 6 publications

References 31 publications

Physical models of infant mortality: implications for defects in biological systems

Physical models of infant mortality: implications for defects in biological systems

A joint explanation of infant and old age mortality

A joint explanation of infant and old age mortality

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About