ReviewAgeing research reviews2019
Does senescence promote fitness in Caenorhabditis elegans by causing death?
Review in Ageing research reviews, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 33 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
33 citing papers in PubMed.
- Review
- The pace and shape of ant ageing.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2025Review
- Stress-induced organismal death is genetically regulated by the mTOR-Zeste-Phae1 axis.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Cell differentiation, aging, and death in spatially organized yeast communities: mechanisms and consequences.Cell death and differentiation · 2025Review
- Dying occurs as a defined molecular progression iniScience · 2025Article
- Article
- Germ cells and the aging niche: a systems approach to reproductive longevity.Journal of assisted reproduction and genetics · 2025Review
- Review
- Age-related obesity and inflammaging in cats.Frontiers in veterinary science · 2025Review
- Emerging insights in senescence: pathways from preclinical models to therapeutic innovations.npj aging · 2024Review
- Life history in Caenorhabditis elegans: from molecular genetics to evolutionary ecology.Genetics · 2024Review
- Biological constraint, evolutionary spandrels and antagonistic pleiotropy.Ageing research reviews · 2024Review
- Review
- Colony level fitness analysis identifies a trade-off between population growth rate and dauer yield in Caenorhabditis elegans.BMC ecology and evolution · 2024Article
- Directional selection coupled with kin selection favors the establishment of senescence.BMC biology · 2023Article
- C. elegans ageing is accelerated by a self-destructive reproductive programme.Nature communications · 2023Article
- The roles and mechanisms of senescence-associated secretory phenotype (SASP): can it be controlled by senolysis?Inflammation and regeneration · 2022Review
- The hyperfunction theory: An emerging paradigm for the biology of aging.Ageing research reviews · 2022Review
- Semelparous Death as one Element of Iteroparous Aging Gone Large.Frontiers in genetics · 2022Article
- Innate Immunity as an Executor of the Programmed Death of Individual Organisms for the Benefit of the Entire Population.International journal of molecular sciences · 2021Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
A widely appreciated conclusion from evolutionary theory is that senescence (aging) is of no adaptive value to the individual that it afflicts. Yet studies of Caenorhabditis elegans and Saccharomyces cerevisiae are increasingly revealing the presence of processes which actively cause senescence and death, leading some biogerontologists to wonder about the established theory. Here we argue that programmed death that increases fitness could occur in C. elegans and S. cerevisiae, and that this is consistent with the classic evolutionary theory of aging. This is because of the special conditions under which these organisms have evolved, particularly the existence of clonal populations with limited dispersal and, in the case of C. elegans, the brevity of the reproductive period caused by protandrous hermaphroditism. Under these conditions, death-promoting mechanisms could promote worm fitness by enhancing inclusive fitness, or worm colony fitness through group selection. Such altruistic, adaptive death is not expected to evolve in organisms with outbred, dispersed populations (e.g. most vertebrate species). The plausibility of adaptive death in C. elegans is supported by computer modelling studies, and new knowledge about the ecology of this species. To support these arguments we also review the biology of adaptive death, and distinguish three forms: consumer sacrifice, biomass sacrifice and defensive sacrifice.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.