The Fundamental Causes of Cellular Senescence and Cellular Differentiation

Abstract

Cell differentiation and cellular senescence are two of the most fundamental issues in biology. Our research suggests that the fundamental cause of cellular senescence is the shortening of telomere DNA arrays and/or rDNA arrays. The fundamental reasons for the selective expression of cell differentiation genes may include: 1) altering the DNA sequences in gene regulatory regions; 2) DNA methylation modifications; 3) initially changing the DNA sequences in gene regulatory regions and then regulating DNA methylation patterns based on these changes.

Keywords: Cellular senescence, Telomere DNA and ribosomal DNA co-regulation model for cell senescence, Cell differentiation, Selective gene expression