Biological aging as the time-depending general decline of biological systems associated with a progressively increasing mortality risk is a general phenomenom of great significance. The underlying processes are very complex and depending on genetic and environment factors. These factors encode or affect a network of interconnected cellular pathways. In no system this network has been deciphered in greater detail. However, the strategy of studying various biological systems has let to the identification of pathways and specific modules and makes it obvious that aging is the result of different...

Aging is the progressive decline in biological functions over time. This decline targets macromolecules, cells, tissues and, as a consequence, whole organisms. Despite considerable progress in the development of testable hypothesis concerning aging in an evolutionary context, a unifying theory of the molecular/physiological mechanistic causes of aging has not been reached. In fact, is it not clear to what extent aging is a programmed or stochastic process.

This book takes the reader from unicellular bacterial deterioration via senescence in fungi and worms to aging in rodents and...

Aging is the progressive decline in biological functions over time. This decline targets macromolecules, cells, tissues and, as a consequence, whole organisms. Despite considerable progress in the development of testable hypothesis concerning aging in an evolutionary context, a unifying theory of the molecular/physiological mechanistic causes of aging has not been reached. In fact, is it not clear to what extent aging is a programmed or stochastic process.

This book takes the reader from unicellular bacterial deterioration via senescence in fungi and worms to aging in rodents and...