Christopher Kashinath Patil (cpatil at leland.Stanford.EDU) wrote:
: Do unicellular organisms age?
: I'd be interested to know what other people's thoughts were on this subject.
: It seems unlikely to me that unicellular organisms would age (as it would
: result in the extinction of clones that did undergo aging), but it also seems
: difficult to understand how certain kinds of age-related damage (buildup of
: metabolic by-products, etc.) could be avoided by these organisms.
: On related notes:
: 1) Do unicellular organisms that pass through haploid and diploid stages
: repair age-related damage in one or both of these stages?
: 2) Do all multicellular organisms age? If not, what is the complexity thresh-
: hold for aging?
: I would be interested to hear thoughts on this subject; needless to say, if
: you have references to relevant articles, please include those in your
: response as well.
I guess it would depend on what you mean by "age." If you mean aging in
the sense like humans do, then unicellular animals don't age. But if you
mean that they age because of defective machinery, then they do age. You
could look into cellular aging if you're interested in the latter topic.
The word apoptosis is what you might associate with cellular aging.
Sorry, no references, but do do a medline search on apoptosis and cell death.
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