Adaptation, aging, and genomic information

Aging is not simply an accumulation of damage or inappropriatehigher-order signaling, though it does secondarily involveboth of these subsidiary mechanisms. Rather, aging occursbecause of the extensive absence of adaptive genomic informationrequired for survival to, and function at, later adult ages,due to the declining forces of natural selection during adultlife. This absence of information then secondarily leadsto misallocations and damage at every level of biologicalorganization. But the primary problem is a failure of adaptationat later ages. Contemporary proposals concerning means by whichhuman aging can be ended or cured which are based on simplesignaling or damage theories will thus reliably fail.Strategies based on reverse-engineering age-extended adaptationusing experimental evolution and genomics offer the prospectof systematically greater success.