Antagonistic Pleiotropy Theory
Antagonistic pleiotropy theory of aging explains late-life deterioration as a result of evolution selecting the genes that improve the organism’s fitness in early life, but reduce fitness later in life. We observe the gradual onset of late-life detrimental traits as aging. It was proposed by George Williams in 1957.
Historical context
As of 1957, one evolutionary explanation of aging is Peter Medawar’s mutation accumulation theory of aging (which introduced the concept of selection shadow), published in 1952. Medawar’s theory models aging as a result of passive accumulation of late-acting mutations.
However, Medawar’s theory only models the appearance of “aging genes” as a
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