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Are we getting closer to understanding why we age?

Nature Aging volume 5, pages 1915–1916 (2025)Cite this article

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Over the years, multiple theories and philosophical approaches to understanding the basic reasons and mechanisms involved in the aging of living organisms have been developed, discussed and tested. Most of these theories can be ascribed primarily to one of two camps: accumulation of damage or aging as a program, with the former being generally better accepted by empirical scientists. Within this landscape, most researchers devoted to the discipline try to address the mechanistic basis for how aging occurs, although some more philosophically inclined individuals focus their attention on the question of why is the process so inevitable.

The publication, about a decade ago, of the seminal ‘hallmarks of aging’ paper1 served an important purpose by providing some structure to the field. The development — within a similar time frame — of the concept of geroscience2, and the similarities between the two approaches, indicated a growing level of understanding and maturation. The aging biology field can argue forever about the selection of which cellular processes to include as hallmarks of aging or which hallmark is the most important and should take center stage, and these topics indeed remain controversial3. Having said that, there is no doubt that these publications were able to galvanize the field into an ever-deeper understanding of the underpinnings of the aging process.

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Fig. 1: An example of the nonlinear accumulation of damage with age.

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Acknowledgements

The author thanks V. Pérez for helpful discussions.

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  1. Geroscience Consulting LLC, Germantown, MD, USA

    Felipe Sierra

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  1. Felipe Sierra
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Correspondence to Felipe Sierra.

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Nature Aging thanks Steven Austad and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Sierra, F. Are we getting closer to understanding why we age?. Nat Aging 5, 1915–1916 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43587-025-00969-0

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