Universal Mortality Law, Life Expectancy and Immortality.pdfVIP

Universal Mortality Law, Life Expectancy and Immortality Mark Ya. Azbel School of Physics and Astronomy, Tel-Aviv University, + Ramat Aviv, 69978 Tel Aviv, Israel ; 4 0 0 Max-Planck-Institute für Festkorperforschung – CNRS, 2 n F38042 Grenoble Cedex 9, France. u J Abstract 1 2 Well protected human and laboratory animal populations with abundant resources are v 5 evolutionary unprecedented, and their survival far beyond reproductive age may be a 2 0 5 byproduct rather than tool of evolution. Physical approach, which takes advantage of 0 4 0 their extensively quantified mortality, establishes that its dominant fraction yields the / E P exact law, and suggests its unusual mechanism. The law is universal for all animals, . o i from yeast to humans, despite their drastically different biology and evolution. It predicts b - q that the universal mortality has short memory of the life history, at any age may be reset : v i X to its value at a significantly younger age, and mean life expectancy extended (by r a biologically unprecedented small changes) from its current maximal value to immortality. Mortality change is rapid and stepwise. Demographic data and recent experiments verify these predictions for humans, rats, flies, nematodes and yeast. In particular, mean life expectancy increased 6-fold (to human 430 years), with no apparent loss in health and vitality, in nematodes with a small number of perturbed genes