How and why the mechanisms of ageing and carcinogenesis originated: a hypothesis
Papanin Institute for Biology of Inland Waters, Russian Academy of Sciences Borok, Yaroslavskaya obi. 152742, Russia e-mail: makru@ibiw.yaroslavl.ru
A hypothesis explaning the nature of ageing and carcinogenesis is proposed. The hypothesis is based on the notion of a unitary organism as a module of a colony that has lost the ability to reproduce asexually. The evolutionary forerunner of the old age involution was the asexual iteroparity of colony modules, and the evolutionary forerunner of carcinogenesis was the semelparity of such colonies; the evolutionary forerunner or tumour regression was the switch of the colony module from semelparity to iteroparity. The donor-acceptor relations of a colony module emerge in unitary organisms in the course of ageing and carcinogenesis. The mechanisms of ageing and carcinogenesis originated at the stages of Metazoa evolution when the organisms had not yet acquired the nervous and the endocrine systems.
