Unified theory of human and animals aging. Bioenergy concept aging as a disease

Unified theory of human and animals aging. Bioenergy concept aging as a disease
Алексей Фёдорович Фитин

Aging is caused by the main pathogenic factor initiating this disease – oxygen deficiency in organs and tissues. Hypoxia accelerates the degeneration of the weak link – the sensitive nerve endings of the autonomic nervous system. The sequence of events connected by a network of cause-and-effect relationships and representing the pathogenesis of aging disease is considered. The second etiological factor that determines the pathogenesis of aging disease is local hyperoxia of stem cell niches, which leads to accelerated differentiation of stem cells and, as a result, to age-related depletion of their pools. Within the framework of the Concept, the explanation of known significant facts that characterize this disease, but which have not received a clear explanation within the framework of other hypotheses, is considered. Acquisition of disease status by aging makes it possible not only to actively slow down aging, but also to reverse it.

Алексей Фитин

Unified theory of human and animals aging. Bioenergy concept aging as a disease

1. Part One

One of the principal objects of theoretical research in any department of knowledge is to find the point of view from which the subject appears in its greatest simplicity.

    J. W. Gibbs

My Comment to the Epigraph of the Famous Thermodynamicist (Energeticist) Josiah Willard Gibbs

A distinctive feature of biology is the incredible diversity (heterogeneity) of elements and an even greater variety of connections between them. This diversity is manifested at all levels of organization of living things from molecules to social formations.

Obviously, the maximum simplicity of representing such a global phenomenon as aging should not be achieved due to primitive concepts, that is, due to neglect of the complexity of the organism structure.

Obviously, the maximum simplicity of representing such a global phenomenon as aging should not be achieved due to primitive ideas about it, that is, due to neglect of the complexity of its structure. It was energy that turned out to be that golden key, with the help of which I was able to penetrate into the essence of one of the central problems of biology and medicine – aging. Consideration of this complex problem from the standpoint of bioenergetics revealed the very, truly divine simplicity, which made it possible to unravel the complex tangle of numerous facts regarding this phenomenon and predict a number of consequences of energy deficit for the body. I believe that one of the most important results of the bioenergetic approach to aging became the identification of the leading role of the autonomic nervous system in the pathogenesis of this disease.

Science is built up of facts, as a house is built of stones; but an accumulation of facts is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house.

    Henri Poincare "Science and Hypothesis", 1902

Introduction. How the Bioenergy Concept of Aging Was Born

In connection with the immense breadth of the topic of aging, which must be presented in the limited space of an analytical review, I will present the Concept practically in a thesis form, linking together the etiology and the main stages of pathogenesis by cause-and-effect relationships. As “test words” in the second part of the review, I will present an explanation within the framework of the Concept of a number of long-known phenomena of aging and the most significant facts characterizing this disease, but which have not received a clear explanation within the framework of other hypotheses.

I will cite only the most important facts necessary for an adequate understanding of the Concept and will try not to overload the text with references to facts widely known to gerontologists and geriatricians. The modern possibilities of the Internet allow readers to quickly find the most recent works available in the open access and concerning any fact mentioned in the review.

There are no new facts concerning aging in this work. The Concept offers a new look at this disease, its etiology and pathogenesis. A patient has a chance to be healed if the pathogenic factor that caused his disease (etiology) and the sequence of events in the mechanism of the development of his disease (pathogenesis) are known.

Treatment of aging, like any other disease, blindly or by symptoms, without knowledge of the etiology and pathogenesis, is not only useless, but also harmful (pathogenic) occupation. Many modern authors have already called aging a disease, and not a process, as has been accepted since the second century AD. However, most of them are limited only by etiology and often scattered elements of pathogenesis, linking them to its terminal stages. We do not know anything about the early stages of the pathogenesis of aging. Most of the clearly formulated aging hypotheses are based on pathogenic factors causing chaos in the metabolism of cells and tissues: – on numerous toxic metabolites of the intestinal bacterial flora [1]; – on highly reactive metabolites – free radicals of oxygen and nitrogen, entering into chemical reactions with biological polymers [2] and on chemically active aldehyde – glucose, which modifies amino groups of proteins, with excessive consumption of sugars. The hypothesis of accumulation of mutations is also based on chaos [3].

All of the above hypotheses, in fact, are one-act (primitively simple) and are suitable for explaining only pathological, but in no way physiological aging. Chemical or physical (energy quanta: electrons, photons, alpha particles) impact of a set of pathogenic factors on a huge list of targets in the human body – enzymes, transmembrane carriers, structural proteins, nucleic acids and phospholipids should lead to an unimaginable variety of effects on everyone levels of the organization.

The first stage of pathogenesis, with a similar beginning of aging, can be designated as "metabolic chaos", which eventually leads to the second stage – a "black box", about which, in principle, we do not know anything. And unexpectedly, at the later stages of pathogenesis, the interaction of these two sets – pathogenic factors and targets, leads to a quite definite set of one and a half dozen proliferative-degenerative senile pathologies with quite predictable general unified events of pathogenesis.

Trying to explain this paradoxical phenomenon, I came to the conclusion that the listed pathogenic factors on their own can hardly be the cause of physiological aging.

As for pathological aging, which can be influenced by a huge number of pathogenic factors of a very different nature, even in this case, I doubt that each pathogenic factor that provokes or aggravates pathological aging has its own unique mechanism of action on this disease. I assumed that a huge variety of pathogenic factors of the most diverse nature affects pathological aging through a unified mechanism.

The path to the main and unique pathogenic factor, the same for physiological and pathological aging, which not only initiates, but also prolongs this disease at different stages of pathogenesis, turned out to be quite long and with numerous dead ends.

Analyzing the research results of V. M. Dilman [4] regarding age-related coarsening of the sensitivity of the hypothalamus functions to peripheral regulatory signals of negative feedback (peripheral hormones and key metabolites), accompanied by an increase in the basal level of one of the stress hormones, cortisol, I suggested that in addition to hormonal and metabolic signals that determine this phenomenon, there is a more powerful and significant regulator of the activity of the hypothalamus – the peripheral part of the autonomic nervous system (ANS) – evolutionary metabolic regulation system No. 1, which ensures the rapid adaptation of the body to changing conditions as the environment and the internal environment of the body. I was convinced of this by the results of experiments W. B. Cannon [5] by removing in animals the sympathetic ganglia of the ANS, which provide the neural connection of the brain stem structures with the periphery.

Such an operation did not lead to any significant disturbances in the normal life of animals at rest and under constant environmental conditions. However, such animals lost the ability to quickly adapt and died from insignificant stressful influences. The behavior of the operated animals with a distant peripheral sympathetic nervous system reminded me of the behavior of elderly people. This similarity was expressed in a low threshold of a stress response to what seemed to be the most insignificant, both external and internal influences, manifested in humans in inadequately strong and unreasonable feelings, fears and worries.

This strengthened me in the consciousness that I was on the right track. I became interested in the fine structure of the ANS and the structural features of the neurons of this metabolic regulation system, looking for weak links that could make it the most vulnerable component of the aging mechanism of the body. The success of the search was largely predetermined by my “bioenergetic” past in science [6]. Since then, I have viewed all significant aging events through the prism of bioenergetics.

Such weak links were quickly discovered – incredibly extended processes of pseudo-unipolar neurons, in which a single axon leaves the cell body, splitting into two branches: a long one towards the sense organ and a short one towards the central nervous system, as well as slow and energy-consuming processes of axonal transport over long distances of tens of centimeters, which determines the slow process of their regeneration.

The volume of cytoplasm located in the extended processes of such neurons is hundreds of times greater than the volume of cytoplasm in the body of the neuron, in which the nucleus and the Golgi apparatus are localized, supplying the processes with all the necessary “building materials” for their growth and regeneration due to slow axonal vesicular transport, the speed which is much less than the blood flow velocity. The speed of vesicular transport in the axon reaches 20–50 cm / day, and the blood flow rate is in the range from 0.03 cm / sec in the capillaries to 40 cm / sec in the aorta.

Thus, the rate of vesicular axonal transport of mitochondria and enzymes accumulated in the Golgi apparatus and is 50–70000 times less than the rate of transport of nutrients by the circulatory system. This difference predetermines the limiting stage of the regeneration process of axons damaged in one way or another, which is from 2 to 5 mm per day. I came to the conclusion, that it is the energetics of these unique neurons that can be a limiting factor in their effective work and the regeneration of their offshoots. And since the energetics of a neuron is based on oxidative phosphorylation, I came to the preliminary conclusion that only oxygen can be the initial limiting factor in the work of these unique neurons. Later it turned out that the weakest point of these neurons are the terminal areas of axons farthest from the cell nucleus and from the Golgi apparatus, on which receptors are localized and which are capable of regeneration after physiological degeneration.

1.1 Etiology of Aging

The death of the body is the inevitable outcome of the disease of aging. When assessing the dynamics of aging, two indicators are important – the average indicator and the indicator of the maximum life expectancy.

Searching for the stages of pathogenesis that limit a long and healthy life, I came to the conclusion that the indicator of the maximum or species life expectancy is associated with physiological aging (senescence) and depends on the only unique internal pathogenic factor – oxygen deficiency in organs and tissues and is determined by specific (per unit mass of body weight per unit of time) by the rate of formation of carriers of free energy: adenosine triphosphoric acid (ATP), reduced forms of nicotinamide-adenine dinucleotides (NADH, NADPH), reduced forms of flavine-adenine dinucleotide (FAD) and acetyl-coenzyme A (acetyl-CoA).[1 - Free energy or Gibbs-Helmholtz energy – part of the internal energy of molecules that can be converted into work during reactions.]

Indicator of maximum life expectancy has not changed over the centuries and therefore is a species-specific feature. At the same time, the partial pressure of oxygen in different organs and tissues differs significantly, and therefore the levels of hypoxia, normoxia and hyperoxia for each organ and each tissue are unique [7].

Max Rubner first drew attention to the limitation of the maximum life span for the species of warm-blooded animals, while studying the energy characteristics of animals under resting conditions. More on this in the second part of the review.

Specific rates of synthesis of energy carriers, in turn, are determined not only by the partial pressure of oxygen in organs and tissues, but also by the specific content of mitochondria in cells, which catalyze the main process of synthesis of carriers of free energy – oxidative phosphorylation.

In a number of cells (stem, tumor) and tissues (embryonic tissue, fetus and «cambial» tissues of stem cell niches), in which aerobic glycolysis and the pentose phosphate cycle make a significant contribution to the production of free energy carriers, the amount of enzymes of these metabolic pathways present in cells also determines the specific rates of synthesis of free energy carriers.

Thus, the indicator of the maximum or species life expectancy of organisms is determined by the specific rates of synthesis of free energy carriers (per gram of tissues and organs per unit of time): ATP, NADH, NADPH, FMN, FADH

, Acetyl-CoA.

The parameter limiting the indicator of the maximum life span of a species, according to my proposed bioenergetic Concept of aging, is the specific rate (per kilogram of body weight) of the formation of carriers of free energy, which depends on the content in cells and activity of mitochondria that carry out oxidative phosphorylation of ADP and reduction of NAD

.

The indicator of the average life expectancy is associated with pathological or premature aging, and just like the indicator of the maximum life expectancy depends on the oxygen concentration in organs and tissues, but, at the same time, it is determined not by the rates of formation of carriers of free energy, but the rates of their expenditure.

Pathological aging is accelerated by the influence of numerous factors of a biological, chemical and physical nature, which is realized through a unified process of consumption of deficient oxygen or free energy, both on the work of the body’s safety systems (detoxification systems; immunity systems; stress response systems and supply systems a high level of selectivity of enzymes of matrix synthesis of DNA, RNA and protein, as well as a system for correcting errors made by these enzymes), as well as to overcome metabolic chaos in the form of diseases caused by infections, poisoning, distress and mutations, if the power of energy dependent security systems the body was not enough.

All expenditure of free energy by the body can be divided into two categories. The first is associated with the expenditure of free energy to maintain the basic vital functions, without which life is impossible, and which includes the costs of growth, development, reproduction, functioning, adaptation to small changes in the surrounding and internal environment of the body (costs for the constantly ongoing process of changing enzymatic patterns in cells and for the response to eustress), on maintaining body temperature and creating physiological endogenous reserves of nutrients for the smooth functioning of the body. The listed costs of energy are in a competitive relationship.

For example, the more free energy is spent on adaptation or on reproduction, the less it remains for other functions and the lower the indicator of the maximum life span of the species (see the example of the Shrew in the second part of the review). Another example – long-lived mutants of roundworms – soil nematodes Caenorhabditis elegans for the age-1 or daf-23 gene, encoding the catalytic subunit of phosphatidylinositol-3-kinase, localized in the signal transduction chain from the insulin-like growth factor, were characterized by either complete sterility, or fewer offspring and a high level of embryonic mortality.

I hope that the high energy consumption of the above basic vital functions is obvious to the reader, perhaps, except for the cost of adaptation. In this regard, I will briefly dwell on the mechanism of one of the most energy-consuming life processes – the adaptation of an organism to changes in its internal environment. The process of adaptation underlies the pathogenesis of aging as the longest chronic disease. This is not about the global (strategic) and slow process of adaptation of organisms to environmental conditions for many generations, which underlies the evolution of species and affects the changes in genes, but about the constantly going "every minute" adaptation of the organism to the continuous changes of the organism itself, manifested at the epigenetic level, without changing the genes themselves.

Such operational adaptation is expressed both in a change in the activity of enzymes due to a change in their content in cells, and in a change in their lists (patterns). It is impossible to constantly keep in the cells of this or that organ or tissue the entire set of necessary enzymes for all occasions. A large number of enzymes are classified as inducible and their amount in a cell can vary significantly depending on the situation. The relatively short half-life of many enzymes – from several tens of minutes to a day, indicates both the high rate of change of enzymatic “communities” (patterns) of the cell, and the significant expenditure of free energy, which goes both for synthesis and for degradation proteins. When I first drew attention to the high rate of protein turnover in the cell, I could not understand for a long time the reason for the high degree of cell wastefulness in terms of the expenditure of always deficient free energy.

Indeed, the ribosomal synthesis of only one peptide bond at a cost of 2 kcal/mol is accompanied by the consumption of four high-energy compounds (ATP, pyrophosphate and 2 GTP), with a total cost of 30 kcal/mol. In addition, the intracellular transport of protein to its workplace and folding of the protein into the working conformation also requires considerable additional energy consumption. The highest energy cost is characteristic of proteins delivered by energy-dependent vesicular transport over huge distances from the body of neurons along axons.

Only now, considering the energy costs underlying the life of cells and the organism as a whole, I realized the high cost of adaptation to the changing conditions of the internal environment of the organism. An example is the activation of the synthesis of a large list of enzymes under hypoxic conditions. For example, hypoxia of cell culture of cytotoxic T lymphocytes leads to an increase in the number of more than 7600 proteins [8]. Considering the huge variety of cells involved in the response to hypoxia, a large amount of the body's energy expenditures for adaptation to hypoxia should be assumed.

In my opinion, it is hypoxia that is the most common cause of changes in cell enzymatic patterns. A feature of hypoxia as a leading pathogenic factor is the high frequency of its manifestation in certain local volumes of organs and tissues. With age, the frequency of episodes of local hypoxia, their duration and depth increase, and, therefore, the expenditure of free energy both for adaptation and for exiting the adapted state and return to normoxia, also accompanied by a change in enzymatic patterns, increases.

The constant implementation of such cycles, initiated by episodes of local or general hypoxia, makes the adaptation process the most energy-consuming process that accelerates aging.