Practice Set 8 Test 3 (C8T3) | How does the Biological Clock tick?

How Does the Biological Clock Tick?

Our life span is giới hạn. Everyone accepts this as ‘biologically’ obvious. ‘Nothing lives forever!’ However, in this statement we think of artificially produced, technical objects, products which are chịu đựng natural wear and tear during use. This leads to the result that at some time or other the object stops working and is unusable (‘death’ in the biological sense). But are the wear and tear and loss of function of technical objects and the death of living sinh vật really similar or comparable?

Our ‘dead’ products are ‘tĩnh’, closed systems. It is always the basic material which cấu thành, thiết lập the object and which, in the natural course of things, is worn down and becomes ‘older*. Ageing in this case must occur according to the laws of physical chemistry and of nhiệt động lực học. Although the same law holds for a living organism, the result of this law is not không thể lay chuyển in the same way. At least miễn là/nếu a biological system has the ability to renew itself it could actually become older without ageing; an organism is an open, dynamic system through which new material continuously flows. Destruction of old material and formation of new material are thus in permanent dynamic Sự thăng bằng. The material of which the organism is formed changes continuously. Thus our bodies continuously exchange old substance for new, just like a spring which more or less maintains its form and movement, but in which the water phân tử are always different.

Thus ageing and death should not be seen as không tránh khỏi, particularly as the organism possesses many mechanisms for repair. It is not, in principle, necessary for a biological system to age and die. Nevertheless, a restricted life span, ageing, and then death are basic characteristics of life. The reason for this is easy to recognise: in nature, the Có sẵn, hiện hữu organisms either adapt or are regularly replaced by new types. Because of changes in the genetic material (sự đột biến) these have new characteristics and in the course of their individual lives they are tested for optimal or better adaptation to the environmental conditions. sự bất tử would disturb this system – it needs room for new and better life. This is the basic problem of evolution.

Every organism has a life span which is highly characteristic. There are nổi bật, rõ rệt differences in life span between different species, but within one species the parameter is relatively constant. For example, the average duration of human life has hardly changed in thousands of years. Although more and more people đạt đến an advanced age as a result of developments in medical care and better nutrition, the characteristic upper limit for most remains 80 years. A further argument against the simple wear and tear theory is the sự quan sát that the time within which organisms age lies between a few days (even a few hours for unicellular organisms) and several thousand years, as with mammoth trees.

If a life span is a genetically determined biological characteristic, it is logically necessary to nêu ra/đề xuất the existence of an internal clock, which in some way measures and controls the ageing process and which finally determines death as the last step in a fixed programme. Like the life span, the trao đổi chất rate has for different organisms a fixed mathematical relationship to the body mass. khi so sánh với the life span this relationship is ‘inverted’: the larger the organism the lower its metabolic rate. Again this relationship is valid not only for birds, but also, similarly on average within the systematic unit, for all other organisms (plants, animals, unicellular organisms).

Animals which behave ‘Thanh đạm, đạm bạc’ with energy become particularly old, for example, crocodiles and tortoises. Parrots and birds of prey are often held cột dây, trói buộc. Thus they are not able to ‘experience life’ and so they attain a high life span bị giam cầm, bị nhốt lồng. Animals which save energy by sự ngủ đông or lethargy (e.g. bats or hedgehogs) live much longer than those which are always active. The metabolic rate of mice can be reduced by a very low tiêu thụ food (hunger diet). They then may live twice as long as their well fed đồng loại . Women become distinctly (about 10 per cent) older than men. If you examine the metabolic rates of the two sexes you establish that the higher male metabolic rate roughly accounts for the lower male life span. That means that they live life ‘mạnh mẽ, đầy năng lượng’ – more intensively, but not for as long.

It follows from the above that tiết kiệm, tằn tiện use of energy reserves should tend to extend life. Extreme high performance sports may lead to optimal tim mạch performance, but they quite certainly do not prolong life. Relaxation lowers metabolic rate, as does đủ sleep and in general an equable and balanced personality. Each of us can develop his or her own ‘energy saving programme’ with a little self-observation, nghiêm túc self-control and, above all, logical consistency. Experience will show that to live in this way not only increases the life span but is also very healthy. This final aspect should not be forgotten.