Genetics of Ageing and Multifactorial Diseases

The ageing process of an organism may be defined as the, mainly intrinsic, progressive accumulation of changes with time, associated with or responsible for the increasing risk of dying. Only some of these changes are clearly associated with disease. Ageing studies of many different species have revealed that at time points at which age-related changes become detectable, they can be found at all levels of organismic organization. These involve changes in hormone status, response mechanisms to stress, structural components, such as the intra- and extracellular matrix and chromatin, the primary DNA sequence, the protein synthesis machinery, etc.