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Microbial ageing and longevity

Nature Reviews Microbiology volume 17, pages 679–690 (2019)Cite this article

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A Publisher Correction to this article was published on 26 September 2019

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Abstract

Longevity reflects the ability to maintain homeostatic conditions necessary for life as an organism ages. A long-lived organism must contend not only with environmental hazards but also with internal entropy and macromolecular damage that result in the loss of fitness during ageing, a phenomenon known as senescence. Although central to many of the core concepts in biology, ageing and longevity have primarily been investigated in sexually reproducing, multicellular organisms. However, growing evidence suggests that microorganisms undergo senescence, and can also exhibit extreme longevity. In this Review, we integrate theoretical and empirical insights to establish a unified perspective on senescence and longevity. We discuss the evolutionary origins, genetic mechanisms and functional consequences of microbial ageing. In addition to having biomedical implications, insights into microbial ageing shed light on the role of ageing in the origin of life and the upper limits to longevity.

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Fig. 1: Reproductive asymmetry enables microbial ageing.
Fig. 2: The relationship between body size and lifespan.
Fig. 3: Damage to cellular molecules during ageing.
Fig. 4: Asymmetrical reproduction in different microorganisms.

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  • 26 September 2019

    An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge D. A. Schwartz (Indiana University), N. I. Wisnoski (Indiana University), M. Coelho (Harvard University), A. Amir (Harvard University), J. Lin (Harvard University) and J. Min (Harvard University) for critical feedback on earlier versions of this manuscript along with the National Science Foundation (1442246, J.T.L.) and a US Army Research Office Grant (W911NF-14-1-0411, J.T.L.) for financial support.

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  1. Department of Biology, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA

    Roy Z. Moger-Reischer & Jay T. Lennon

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R.Z.M.-R. and J.T.L. conceived and wrote the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Jay T. Lennon.

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Nature Reviews Microbiology thanks A. Amir, together with J. Lin and J. Min, and M. Coelho for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Glossary

Senescence

Decreasing survival and/or reproductive ability of an individual during ageing.

Longevity

The ability of an organism to maintain the homeostatic conditions necessary to remain viable over time.

Life history

The set of adaptive traits, such as size, growth rate, extrinsic mortality rate, age to maturity and age-specific fecundity, that characterize the life course of a typical individual of a particular species.

Replicative ageing

A type of ageing in which age is measured in units of divisions of an individual cell, rather than units of time.

Trade-offs

Physical or genetic constraints that prevent the simultaneous optimization of multiple traits by natural selection.

Damage

Structural modifications to cellular macromolecules that accumulate during ageing.

Extrinsic mortality

Environment-related causes of death that occur independently of organismal vigour or age.

Intrinsic mortality

Ageing-related causes of death, due to accumulation of macromolecular damage, which occur independently of the external environment.

Disposable soma theory

Life history-based theory for the evolution of senescence emphasizing constraints of resource allocation. This theory proposes that senescence evolves because it is adaptive to allocate fewer resources to repair in order to allocate more resources to reproduction.

Asymmetrical reproduction

A reproductive event that results in a distinct mother individual, a distinct offspring individual and a difference in age between them.

Programmed cell death

(PCD) Cell death that is caused by factors encoded in the genome of the organism.

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Moger-Reischer, R.Z., Lennon, J.T. Microbial ageing and longevity. Nat Rev Microbiol 17, 679–690 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41579-019-0253-y

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