Housekeeping genes and death genes in the Penna aging model

摘要

The Penna model of aging predicts the accumulation of defective genes expressed after the organism reaches the minimum reproduction age in the genetic pool of the population. The accumulation of defects in the genomes implicates the specific age structure of the modeled populations. Nevertheless, the fraction of defective alleles at loci switched on before the reproduction period does not depend on exact age when precisely they are switched on, it may be just after conception or after birth. We have modeled the mortality of a population in the period before the minimum reproduction age, even before birth, assuming that sets of genes of different size are switched on in different periods of the life span. [References: 10]