Intrinsic Mutagenesis: A Genetic Approach to Ageing

ISBN-13: 9789401166089 / Angielski / Miękka / 2012 / 244 str.

Burnet MacFarlane

Opis

This book is something which almost accidentally has developed very differently from how it was initially planned. The intention was to elaborate the part played by the immune system in ageing with the role of the thymus as central theme. It was to be essentially an expansion of a lecture I gave in 1970 and would inevitably have been concerned with much the same material as Walford's book, The Immunologic Theory of Aging, though from a different slant. What changed its character arose from a series of attempts to find logical connection between two findings that most gerontologists regard as axiomatic: that the lifespan of a mammal is genetically determined, and that the actual process of ageing is an accumulation of genetic error, of somatic mutations. It is possible that the connection is so indirect, circuitous and multiform that generations of detailed and unattractive research will be needed to elucidate it, or, more likely, the whole matter discarded as a non-problem. But a more inspiring approach does seem possible. The working hypothesis, which halfway through its writing became the new central theme of the book, arose when I was a member of a committee appointed by the Australian Academy of Science at the request of the Australian Government to advise on the danger from French nuclear tests in the South Pacific.

Spis treści

1 Mutation and the Concept of Intrinsic Mutagenesis.- 1 The two imperatives.- 2 Intrinsic mutagenesis: an elementary discussion at the level of molecular biology.- 3 Mutator genes and other leads from bacterial genetics.- 4 Mutation in evolution.- 5 Somatic mutations.- 2 Physiology and Pathology of Ageing.- 6 The manifestations of ageing.- 7 Ageing: the somatic mutational approach.- 8 The thymus in relation to ageing.- 9 Other immunological aspects in ageing.- 10 Atherosclerosis.- 11 Hypothesis of the genetic control of lifespan.- 3 Malignant Disease.- 12 Malignant disease (1).- 13 Malignant disease (2).- 14 Immune surveillance.- 15 Lymphoreticular malignancies and their relation to herpesvirus infections.- 4 Other Age-Associated Conditions.- 16 Human congenital anomalies.- 17 Normal and pathological ageing in the post-mitotic cells of the brain.- 18 Social implications of the biological approach to ageing.- References.