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Asked by to Edward, Ian, Mathew, Naomi, sakshisharda on 23 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
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Sakshi Sharda answered on 23 Jun 2014:
Hello madscientist0834
Love your name!! your question is really very deep and an interesting one. people get old for many reasons, some of which are still being investigated by scientists. As we progress, our body ages because our DNA does not replicate properly and slowly errors in that accumulate making some of our organs malfunction. We also age because of accumulation of toxic substances in our body that lead to changes in the genes which alters the way our cell functions and deals with many of it’s waste products. This leads to accumulation of the waste products which further lead to harmful effects of ageing.
If we understand this problem in an evolutionary way, ageing has evolved in all organisms so that there is room for other organisms to come. Imagine if all the animals that have ever existed were still on this planet, we would have nowhere to go!! Scientists say that if an organism does not age they it be a demon that would harm others existence.
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Naomi Osborne answered on 23 Jun 2014:
It’s because of natural selection that our body starts malfunctioning as Sakshi has described – and it happens after a reproductive age so we’ve already reproduced to keep the species living.
When our cells reproduce, we have little pieces of DNA on the end of our chromosomes (structures of DNA found in our cells) that helps them replicate. As we get older, these pieces of DNA get shorter making it harder for our cells to reproduce, which contributes to aging along with damage to DNA caused by the sun and many other factors.
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