Redundancy and Biological Aging
- 6 September 1963
- journal article
- research article
- Published by American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Science
- Vol. 141 (3584), 910-912
- https://doi.org/10.1126/science.141.3584.910
Abstract
The relationship between aging and organizational redundancy in biological systems was investigated from the standpoint of information theory. A mortality rate function derived for a randomly deteriorating redundant system approximates observed mortality rates more closely than does the Gompertz function and indicates that variations in redundancy among various mammalian species could account for their widely different rates of aging.Keywords
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