Vital rates from the action of mutation accumulation

Lifespan distributions of populations of quite diverse species such as humans and yeast seem to surprisingly well follow the same empirical Gompertz-Makeham law, which basically predicts an exponential increase of mortality rate with age. This empirical law can for example be grounded in reliability theory when individuals age through the random failure of a number of redundant essential functional units. However, ageing and subsequent death can also be caused by the accumula...

W. D. Hamilton's celebrated formula for the age-specific force of natural selection furnishes predictions for senescent mortality due to mutation accumulation, at the price of reliance on a linear approximation. Applying to Hamilton's setting the full non-linear demographic model for mutation accumulation of Evans et al. (2007), we find surprising differences. Non-linear interactions cause the collapse of Hamilton-style predictions in the most commonly studied case, refine pr...

The Gompertz model since 1825 has significantly contributed to interpretation of ageing in biological and social sciences. However, in modern research findings, it is clear that the Gompertz model is not successful to describe the whole demographic trajectories. In this letter, a new demographic model is introduced especially to describe human demographic trajectories, for example, for Sweden (2002). The new model is derived from the Weibull model with an age-dependent shape ...

A probability model is presented for the dynamics of mutation-selection balance in a haploid infinite-population infinite-sites setting sufficiently general to cover mutation-driven changes in full age-specific demographic schedules. The model accommodates epistatic as well as additive selective costs. Closed form characterizations are obtained for solutions in finite time, along with proofs of convergence to stationary distributions and a proof of the uniqueness of solutions...

Biological aging is characterized by an age-dependent increase in the probability of death and by a decrease in the reproductive capacity. Individual age-dependent rates of survival and reproduction have a strong impact on population dynamics, and the genetic elements determining survival and reproduction are under different selective forces throughout an organism lifespan. Here we develop a highly versatile numerical model of genome evolution --- both asexual and sexual --- ...

In this paper we investigate the flexibility of matrix distributions for the modeling of mortality. Starting from a simple Gompertz law, we show how the introduction of matrix-valued parameters via inhomogeneous phase-type distributions can lead to reasonably accurate and relatively parsimonious models for mortality curves across the entire lifespan. A particular feature of the proposed model framework is that it allows for a more direct interpretation of the implied underlyi...

Since its proposition in 1995, the Heumann-Hotzel model has remained as an obscure model of biological aging. The main arguments used against it were its apparent inability to describe populations with many age intervals and its failure to prevent a population extinction when only deleterious mutations are present. We find that with a simple and minor change in the model these difficulties can be surmounted. Our numerical simulations show a plethora of interesting features: t...

The significance of mortality modeling extends across multiple research areas, including life insurance valuation, longevity risk management, life-cycle hypothesis, and retirement income planning. Despite the variety of existing approaches, such as mortality laws and factor-based models, they often lack compatibility or fail to meet specific research needs. To address these shortcomings, this study introduces a novel approach centered on modeling the dynamics of individual vi...

The Gompertz law of dependence of human mortality rate on age is derived from a simple model of death as a result of the exponentially rare escape of abnormal cells from immunological response.

The Gompertz law of mortality quantitatively describes the mortality rate of humans and almost all multicellular animals. However, its underlying kinetic mechanism is unclear. The Gompertz law cannot explain the effect of temperature on lifespan and the mortality plateau at advanced ages. In this study a reaction kinetics model with a time dependent rate coefficient is proposed to describe the survival and senescence processes. A temperature-dependent mortality function was d...