细胞身份丧失驱动人类衰老：两篇新论文

I suspect that epigenetic aging is adaptive; a deliberately programmed sequence wherein genes more likely to contribute to age-related mortality are shut down progressively. This being in response to random genetic damage accumulating at a predictable rate.

What we think of as aging then becomes primarily the epigenetic response to the problem of DNA damage, much like the symptoms of a virus are mostly the result of the immune response rather than the virus’s direct effects.