Re: Cornering the causes of aging

From: Damien Broderick (d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Wed Jun 28 2000 - 19:38:37 MDT


At 09:29 AM 28/06/00 -0400, "CYMM" <cymm@trinidad.net> wrote:

>BUT, there are also distinct ADVANTAGES to short life... the main ones being
>genetic adaptability because of the increased genetic mutation and
>recombination.

>That's why bacteria can run evolutionary rings around humans.

We're doing okay. We're still here, last time I looked.

Presumably that's because we're individually *not* just metazoan clones,
since our immunity defences are self-mutating and explore much of the same
search space as the mutating bacteria.

Strikes me that short-life-plus-sex are targeted at parasites rather than
bacteria or viri, remixing vulnerable components at a somewhat larger scale
from that typically defended by the immune system. (But I might be
speculating through my hat.)

Damien



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