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Science 6 September 1963:
Vol. 141. no. 3584, pp. 910 - 912
DOI: 10.1126/science.141.3584.910
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Articles

Redundancy and Biological Aging

Horton A. Johnson 1

1 Department of Pathology, University of Utah College of Medicine, Salt Lake City

The relationship between aging and organizational redundancy in biological systems was investigated from the standpoint of information theory. A mortality rate function derived for a randomly deteriorating redundant system approximates observed mortality rates more closely than does the Gompertz function and indicates that variations in redundancy among various mammalian species could account for their widely different rates of aging.


THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Information Theory in Biology after 18 Years.
H. A. Johnson (1970)
Science 168, 1545-1550
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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)