Anyone knowledgable on the theories of ageing here?

[l-lannah]

I'm currently doing a module on the biology of ageing, and it's so confusing. D;
If anyone can help me get my head around the various theories of ageing (wear and tear, programmed, mutation accumulation, antagonistic pleiotropy, disposable soma etc) and the arguments against them that would be great!

/really hopes someone here has done it. xD

[Mooby the Golden Sock]

I assume you've read the Wikipedia page, so you must have some idea about what's going on. What, in particular, do you not get?

And how is this an extended discussion?

[DXnobodyX]

After wiki comes google scholar
http://scholar.google.com.au/scholar?q=theories+of+aging&hl=en&btnG=Search&as_sdt=1,5&as_sdtp=on

[Suicidesoldier#1]

There's cellular damage, irremovable waste build up in between cells, the ends of genes being stretched out too much, and a few other things.

Mostly, if we could make it so chromosomes would stop being damaged as much (I.E. copy of a copy of a copy), thus making a 50 year old kidney the same as a 25 year old kidney, getting rid of wrinkles and things, whether by repair or constant maintenance or something, reduce the length of telomeres chains AND clean out toxins that would otherwise be hard to clean out, then we could mostly get rid of the effects of aging and live for a very long time.


Ultimately we'd have to planet hop and maybe the universe is exponentially expanding at an inceasing rate so we may never really be able to do that but!

We could theoretically live for billions of years if we stayed safe and remained relativley healthy and whatnot.