768B Poster - 12. Physiology, metabolism and aging
Friday April 08, 2:00 PM - 4:00 PM

Authors:
Tristan Roget ^1,2; Pierre Jolivet ³; Sylvie Méléard ¹; Michael Rera ⁴

Affiliations:
1) École Polytechnique, Palaiseau, France; 2) Université de Montpellier, Montpellier, France; 3) IRIT-APO - Algorithmes Parallèles et Optimisation - Institut de recherche en informatique de Toulouse, France; 4) Centre de Recherche Interdisciplinaire, INSERM, Université de Paris

Keywords:
i. lifespan; e. quantitative traits

The possibility of ageing being directly selected through evolution has been discussed for the past hundred years. As ageing is occurring, by definition, only late in life, many think that it cannot be actively selected as a process. In addition, by decreasing an individual’s fitness, it is thought unlikely to be selected for. In order to explain the observation of its broad presence in the realm of life, numerous theories have been proposed in the past 60 years.
Here, building upon a simple two parameters life history trait model that we recently introduced and that summarizes the life of an organism to its two core abilities - reproduce and thrive -, we discuss the possibility of ageing being selected for through evolution.
Our model shows that senescence will appear and be positively selected for through evolution thanks to the higher evolvability it confers to organisms. In addition, it predicts that the Lansing effect should be conserved in a large proportion of organisms showing age-related senescence. This formal and numerical analysis of ageing’s evolution also provides new hints to test the validity of existing theories by proposing a simple mathematical interpretation of the long-discussed longevity-fertility tradeoff or mutations accumulation.