Big mice die young but large animals live longer

Mikhail V. Blagosklonny¹

¹Department of Cell Stress Biology, Roswell Park Cancer Institute, BLSC, L3-312, Elm and Carlton Streets, Buffalo, NY, 14263, USA

Received: March 30, 2013Accepted: April 19, 2013Published: April 20, 2013

Copyright: © 2013 Blagosklonny et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

It has been known for millennia that large animals live longer, inspiring numerous theories of aging. For example, elephants and humans live longer than mice, which in turn live longer than worms and flies. The correlation is not perfect, with many explainable exceptions, but it is still obvious. In contrast, within each species (e.g., mice and some other mammals) small body size is associated with longevity and slow aging. The concept that aging (and age-related diseases) is an aimless continuation of developmental growth, a hyperfunction driven by the same nutrient-sensing and growth-promoting pathways such as MTOR, may explain this longstanding paradox.