Live Young, Die Later: Senescence in the Penna Model of Aging

TL;DR

This paper introduces modifications to the Penna model of aging to incorporate senescence, revealing that delayed senescence leads to younger populations with increased longevity.

Contribution

It proposes two new versions of the Penna model that explicitly include senescence and provides analytical solutions for their steady states.

Findings

Models with delayed senescence have younger populations.

Delayed senescence models result in longer lifespans.

Analytical steady state solutions were derived.

Abstract

Cellular senescence is thought to play a major role in age-related diseases, which cause nearly 67% of all human deaths worldwide. Recent research in mice showed that exercising mice had higher levels of telomerase, an enzyme that helps maintain telomere length, than non-exercising mice. A commonly used model for biological aging was proposed by Penna. I propose two modifications of the Penna model that incorporate senescence and find analytical steady state solutions following Coe, Mao and Cates. I find that models corresponding to delayed senescence have younger populations that live longer.