ANTI-AGING: Clearing Cellular Dead Wood. “The whole cellular senescence pathway presumably developed as a way to avoid slipping into a tumor phenotype – the more cellular divisions, the greater the chance of something going wrong along the way. It’s a tradeoff, and evolution seems more than willing to shortchange older members of the species who have generally passed on their genes to all the offspring that they’re going to. But humans have other goals. We are looking at a rather rapidly aging planet, if current demographic trends hold up, and it would be extremely desirable to have that associated with less of a disease burden.”

Related: The Longevity Dividend.