, Acetyl-CoA.
The parameter limiting the indicator of the maximum life span of a species, according to my proposed bioenergetic Concept of aging, is the specific rate (per kilogram of body weight) of the formation of carriers of free energy, which depends on the content in cells and activity of mitochondria that carry out oxidative phosphorylation of ADP and reduction of NAD>+.
The indicator of the average life expectancy is associated with pathological or premature aging, and just like the indicator of the maximum life expectancy depends on the oxygen concentration in organs and tissues, but, at the same time, it is determined not by the rates of formation of carriers of free energy, but the rates of their expenditure.
Pathological aging is accelerated by the influence of numerous factors of a biological, chemical and physical nature, which is realized through a unified process of consumption of deficient oxygen or free energy, both on the work of the body’s safety systems (detoxification systems; immunity systems; stress response systems and supply systems a high level of selectivity of enzymes of matrix synthesis of DNA, RNA and protein, as well as a system for correcting errors made by these enzymes), as well as to overcome metabolic chaos in the form of diseases caused by infections, poisoning, distress and mutations, if the power of energy dependent security systems the body was not enough.
All expenditure of free energy by the body can be divided into two categories. The first is associated with the expenditure of free energy to maintain the basic vital functions, without which life is impossible, and which includes the costs of growth, development, reproduction, functioning, adaptation to small changes in the surrounding and internal environment of the body (costs for the constantly ongoing process of changing enzymatic patterns in cells and for the response to eustress), on maintaining body temperature and creating physiological endogenous reserves of nutrients for the smooth functioning of the body. The listed costs of energy are in a competitive relationship.
For example, the more free energy is spent on adaptation or on reproduction, the less it remains for other functions and the lower the indicator of the maximum life span of the species (see the example of the Shrew in the second part of the review). Another example – long-lived mutants of roundworms – soil nematodes Caenorhabditis elegans for the age-1 or daf-23 gene, encoding the catalytic subunit of phosphatidylinositol-3-kinase, localized in the signal transduction chain from the insulin-like growth factor, were characterized by either complete sterility, or fewer offspring and a high level of embryonic mortality.