Adaptive aging in the context of evolutionary theory

J. J. Mitteldorf

Compelling evidence for an adaptive origin of aging has clashed with traditional evolutionary theory based on exclusively individual selection. The consensus view has been to try to understand aging in the context of a narrow, restrictive evolutionary paradigm, called the Modern Synthesis, or neo-Darwinism. But neo-Darwinism has shown itself to be inadequate in other ways, failing to account for stable ecosystems, for the evolution of sex and the maintenance of diversity and the architecture of the genome, which appears to be optimized for evolvability. Thus aging is not the only reason to consider overhauling the standard theoretical framework. Selection for stable ecosystems is rapid and efficient, and so it is the easiest modification of the neo-Darwinian paradigm to understand and to model. Aging may be understood in this context. More profound and more mysterious are the ways in which the process of evolution itself has been transformed in a bootstrapping process of selection for evolvability. Evolving organisms have learned to channel their variation in ways that are likely to enhance their long-term prospects. This is an expanded notion of fitness. Only in this context can the full spectrum of sophisticated adaptations be understood, including aging, sex, diversity, ecological interdependence, and the structure of the genome.