Theory Article Volume 13, Issue 18 pp 22611—22622
Applying deductive reasoning and the principles of particle physics to aging research
- 1 Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec H3A 2B4, Canada
- 2 Metabolic Disorders and Complications Program, Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre, Montreal, Quebec H4A 3J1, Canada
- 3 Brain Repair and Integrative Neuroscience Program, Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre, Montreal, Quebec H4A 3J1, Canada
- 4 Department of Family Medicine, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec H3S 1Z1, Canada
- 5 Division of Genetics, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA
Received: July 28, 2021 Accepted: September 11, 2021 Published: September 20, 2021
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.203555How to Cite
Copyright: © 2021 Moldakozhayev et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Aging is debatably one of the biggest mysteries for humanity, a process consisting of myriads of genetic, molecular, environmental, and stochastic deleterious events, leading to a progressive loss of organism functionality. Aging research currently lacks a common conceptual framework, and one challenge in establishing it is the fact that aging is a highly complex process. To help develop a framework of standard aging rules, we suggest the use of deductive reasoning based on particle physics' principles. Specifically, the principles that we suggest applying to study aging are discreteness of processes, transformation as a result of interaction, and understanding of threshold. Using this framework, biological aging may be described as a sequence of highly discrete molecular transformations caused by a combination of various specific internal and external factors. Internal organismal function and interaction of an organism with the environment result in chronic accumulation of molecular damage and other deleterious consequences of metabolism and the consequent loss of system's functionality. The loss of functionality occurs as a series of thresholds the organism reaches before it turns into an utterly non-functional state. We discuss how having a common ground may benefit aging research, introduce the logic of new principles and analyze specific examples of how this framework could be used to study aging and design longevity interventions.