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In their Perspective, Lithgow and Kirkwood postulate that evolutionary theory predicts that the process of aging is not subject to selection in the same way as other physiological processes such as development. They then describe the genetics of aging in the worm Caenorhabditis elegans and how what we know about the functions of the genes that have been identified as controlling life-span support this notion.
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Lithgow et al. (1996) studied this question.
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