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When and How Can Death Be an Adaptation?

  • Phenoptosis
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Abstract

The concept of phenoptosis (or programmed organismal death) is problematic with respect to most species (including humans) since it implies that dying of old age is an adaptation, which contradicts the established evolutionary theory. But can dying ever be a strategy to promote fitness? Given recent developments in our understanding of the evolution of altruism, particularly kin and multilevel selection theories, it is timely to revisit the possible existence of adaptive death. Here, we discuss how programmed death could be an adaptive trait under certain conditions found in organisms capable of clonal colonial existence, such as the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae and, perhaps, the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. The concept of phenoptosis is only tenable if consistent with the evolutionary theory; this accepted, phenoptosis may only occur under special conditions that do not apply to most animal groups (including mammals).

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Funding

The work was financially supported by the Wellcome Trust Strategic Award (098565/Z/12/Z).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Healthy Ageing, Research Department of Genetics, Evolution and Environment, University College London, London, WC1E 6BT, UK

    E. R. Galimov, J. N. Lohr & D. Gems

Authors
  1. E. R. Galimov
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  2. J. N. Lohr
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  3. D. Gems
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to D. Gems.

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Conflict of interest. The authors declare no conflict of interest neither in financial nor in any other area.

Compliance with ethical norms. This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors.

Published in Russian in Biokhimiya, 2019, Vol. 84, No. 12, pp. 1771-1776.

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Galimov, E.R., Lohr, J.N. & Gems, D. When and How Can Death Be an Adaptation?. Biochemistry Moscow 84, 1433–1437 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1134/S0006297919120010

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1134/S0006297919120010

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