Human Ageing: A Unique Experience

Implications for the Disease Concept

Human Ageing: A Unique Experience explores the biology of human ageing focusing on the individual. The book begins with the premature ageing disorder Hutchinson-Gilford Progeria syndrome and spins a web of interconnected biological domains involving lamins, telomeres, alternative splicing, genetics, epigenetics, and molecular clocks. The profound influence of culture is explored since cultural inheritance and genetic inheritance are the two intertwined processes driving human evolution. An empirical framework is developed to describe human ageing at the individual level and the implications of this framework on the whole concept of diseases are discussed.

Contents:

• The Biology of Ageing:

  • Lamins: Hutchinson–Gilford Progeria Syndrome
  • mTOR Pathway
  • Molecular Clocks
  • Summary and Perspectives

• Ageing and Environmental Cues (Experiences):

  • Regulation of Gene Expression: Epigenetics
  • Environmental Cues: Specific Examples

• Domestication:

  • The Domestication Process: The Russian Silver Fox Experiment
  • The Dog
  • Summary

• Social Context and Culture:

  • Overview
  • Are Humans Still Evolving?
  • Contemporary Evolution
  • Society, Culture, and Ageing
  • Perspectives

• Pulling the Threads Together:

  • Theme: The Biology of Ageing at the Species and Indivdual Levels
  • Theme: Genetic Uniqueness of Each Individual Underlies that Individual's Unique Ageing Pattern
  • Theme: Ageing and an Individual's Social and Cultural Environment
  • Framework for the Ageing Process

• The Disease Construct and Ageing:

  • History of Disease Construct
  • Personalized Medicine
  • Disease or Ageing?
  • Disease or Ageing: Is It Simply Semantics?

Readership: Gerontologists and geriatric physicians; researchers in comparative biology and physiology, genomics and epigenomics, developmental biology. Others include researchers in sociology and history of medicine.