Aging and Gerontology

Senescence and Aging

The biology of aging or biogerontology, has as its primary objective in understanding the basic processes that underlie aging and age related diseases. For some this means increasing human life span, for others it means increasing human health-span. Biological aging is the gradual deterioration of functional characteristic of most complex life forms, arguably found in all biological kingdoms, that on the level of the organism increases mortality after maturation. The word senescence can be referred either to cellular senescence or to senescence of the whole organism.