In nature there are many animal species whose individuals die soon after being played as the female octopus.

Others, such as alligators, do not seem to grow their own.
What they have in common?
This may be evidence that aging is not an inherent trait, but a product of how species evolve in the data environment and that evolution has programmed all species, including humans, to die.
The tantalizing prospect is the subject of a new study "Programmed death is favored by natural selection in spatial systems", in which is used a new mathematical model to revolutionize the understanding of the aging process.
If these results prove accurate may rise to new hopes for those hoping to reschedule humans to live longer.
The controversial idea was developed by Yaneer Bar-Yam, director of the New England Complex Systems Institute (Necsi), founder Donald E. Ingber of Harvard Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, and Justin Werfel researcher working with both.
The new team's work was published in the Physical Review of Letters and argues that "the calculations matemaci the basis of our understanding of evolution are fundamentally wrong."
We currently believe that the evolution selections organisms that live longer, giving them more chances to survive, right?
"According to traditional theory, the evolution always would opt for living longer and that which we experience both as long as possible from the biological point of view," Bar-Yam told me in a recent interview, "we can shorten it or lengthen" .
But what if the life extension is not necessarily determined by the adaptive capacity of the bodies but regulated by evolution, based on the amount of resources available for a given population and pressure on its members to breed?
What if death was not a foregone conclusion, but rather a sort of instituted measures to ensure that a single generation will not suck all available resources by removing any possibility to the next.
These, in short, the team's premises.
"If it is true that evolution determines the extension of life, then we can choose to change it by intervening in the mechanism used to control it," Bar-Yam suggested.
The scientist studies indicate the creatures whose bodies react decisively against their own interest as evidenced by the fact that death is not innate but regulated by evolution.
"Aging is not innate.
It's genetic.
The prospect of dramatically extend the length of life is reasonable. "
"For example there is a kind of octopus dies only after reproduced," he explains, "but removing the sex glands specimens survive, their death is stimulated by the system in opposition rather than being innate."
"Crocodiles," says the scholar, "as far as I know, not age.
There are species with varying lifespans.
Among rockfish, for example, some breeds live a few years, hundreds more. "
Bar-Yam has provided me with a chart that shows the radically different durations vital despite the remarkable genetic similarities of the different species of rockfish.
Durations vital in rockfish.
Cailliet et al, Experimental Gerontology, 36, 739 (2001)
This data emphasizes the scientist, constitute evidence that aging is not innate, but an evolutionary behavior developed ad hoc.
How this came to the researchers?
Because the mathematical models used previously to describe the evolution provided such different conclusions?
"That traditional evolutionary theory assumes that every body is located in the same environment," he said Bar-Yam, "you could call it an approximation of the average.
In physics it is called 'mean field approximation' and essentially ignores the local context.
One of the most important aspects that we have shown is that when the local context is included in the model, you get the responses of the organism to the environment variations which in turn is altered by the body.
The Harvard team and Necsi have adopted a new and, according to them, the more accurate model of how organisms interact with the local resources they depend on for survival.
The results are fascinating: "we found that the spatial heterogeneity of the limited resources and the populations of self-organizing structures are in a strong selection for limiting the duration of life," as reported in the study.
In other words: put together limited resources and competing in a given region with a population struggling for survival and the result will be a shorter life span.
"In our model, the free intrinsic mortality resources in a given environment for the descendants, improving the long-term efforts."
In other words, when resources are scarce, a species as a whole is more likely if its population is organized to promote the long-term survival through individual shorter lifespans.
The species mainly evolve to fight overpopulation and overconsumption.
"If an organism damages its environment does not suffer directly him, but his descendants," said Bar-Yam, "This is an incredible importance on the development of social organizations."
"The organisms take advantage of every opportunity for development and this also applies to the duration of evolutionary life.
If each species lived in the same type of environment and onsite a vital extension increased to breed, it would have more chance of success.
But if the environment is in turn influenced by the species that occupy it, with increasing duration of their lifetime, individuals of a species and their descendants would exhaust the resources of that place.
This is harmful. "
This also applies to humans, and this is where things get interesting.
Why Bar-Yam believes that the model shows that humans could live much longer, after all we have inherited the life span of our ancestors who lived as hunter gatherers.
"There is an inherent limit to our long-term self-regenerate skills?
And the answer is there may be a limit, but it does not mean that corresponds to that which is currently experiencing. "
"Aging is not innate," said Bar-Yam.
"It's genetic.
The prospect of drastically extend the length of life is reasonable.
One could take the other side: we do not want to happen?
Because science says that lifespan can be extended?
The answer is that it is based on a bad approximation. "
"If science has denied the possibility of the extension of life," he adds, "the most natural thing to do would be to go back and look at alternative conclusions."
Bar-Yam has reflected on the subject, and he said it would be "reasonable to expect vital durations even 5 or 10 times more."
"There is no reason to say that the extension of the life has some intrinsic limit," says Bar-Yam, "we have already seen examples of mutations in invertebrates that extend the lives of 5 to 10 times and there are animals that apparently age. "
In the study, although it is not the main subject, it is reflected on what could be the mechanism that promotes aging.
"Assuming that the regulation is inherently genetic, it does not mean that the only way to edit it that way," said Bar-Yam, "it is possible that vitamins, medicines and pharmacological interventions can be just as effective."
Last year, a study published in Science noted that the GDF11 protein of the so-called "growth factor" administered to mice appeared to block the aging process, bringing our Michael Byrne to label old age as a new disease.
E`stato also conducted much research on telomeres, the terminal regions of chromosomes involved in their decline, a recent Stanford study has shown that the extension of telomeres "reversed the aging clock trends in human cells in culture" .
Another looming question is this: what if evolution would serve just to maintain our vital extension as short as possible?
If no one died, do not we risk overpopulation and overconsumption on this planet increasingly crowded?
Bar-Yam is not convinced.
It recognizes that the current way in which we distribute resources on the planet is profoundly unjust, but also points out that we would be able to produce enough food enough to feed the entire world population admitted that linger in nefarious practices how to use edible crops for fuel.
"If intentionally will alter the duration of our lives, we have a responsibility to secure our resources," says Bar-Yam, "if people discovered a mechanism that would allow her to live hundreds of years, it should become clear that the planet's resources they are not only ours, but unfortunately not all are clear there are limits not to be exceeded. "

From Vice