There’s some shared thinking in the ageing research community
Reading: Gladyshev et al., Disagreement on foundational principles of biological aging, PNAS Nexus, Volume 3, Issue 12, December 2024.
This is a survey of mainly academic researchers and students, with 106 responses collected at a conference in 2022. The headlines have been: “No one agrees on what ageing is!”—and that’s correct.
It’s interesting, though, to see what consensus there is at the moment:
Notwithstanding the broad disagreement revealed by this survey, the answers nevertheless show elements of shared thinking, with most respondents aligning on certain principles and features of aging, as well as on what aging is not
The shared thinking is that ageing:
- “exists, has identifiable causes and effects, and can be studied experimentally”;
- “is inherently deleterious, involving the accumulation of harmful changes, damage, degeneration, and loss of function”;
- is a process, with a progression and rate of change;
- can be targeted and changed;
- has a start point (but no one agrees when that is);
- “can theoretically be reversed, not just slowed—though this does not imply feasibility”; and
- shows there is a real difference between chronological and biological age.
It is clear from the responses that aging remains an unsolved problem in biology. Scientists disagree over whether it is a universal property of life, whether it is pathological or normal, whether it is subject to natural selection, and whether it has a particular purpose.
In the meantime: eat well, sleep, exercise.