Ageless Animals - Proven Longevity to Validate SENS Strategies

J.C. Guerin
Centenarian Species and Rockfish Project

Caleb Finch at USC coined the term "negligible senescence" in 1990; later he added the test criteria of no observable age-related increase in mortality rate or decrease in reproduction rate after maturity, and no observable age-related decline in physiological capacity or disease resistance. AgelessAnimals.org (a.k.a. Centenarian Species and Rockfish Project), has previously studied rockfish and turtles in 14 pilot studies, twelve in the U.S. and two in Europe. Research included an array of biogerontologic areas, including histology, oxidative damage, telomeres/telomerase, lysosomes and proteolytic activity, mitochondrial deletions, heat shock protein, SOD levels, DNA microarrays, among others. Recent aging studies indicate that bowhead whales have lived over 200 years without dying of old age, potentially creating a much closer research comparison to humans.
In creating SENS, Aubrey de Grey incorporated this term into describing his goal of engineering approaches to attempt to bring humans to a similar state of negligible senescence. Aubrey described seven pathways by which damage accumulates and ultimately ends in aging. If his analysis is correct, the animals that have naturally evolved ways to exhibit negligible senescence would likely be currently using mechanisms to conquer those same damage pathways. Therefore, SENS itself should prove fertile for examining the success of long-lived animals at retarding aging, and testing such animals should validate if SENS theories are realistic descriptions of the necessary pathways to avoid damage accumulation.

Keywords: Negligible senescence, Ageless, Whales, Rockfish