Yes, I've heard similar things before and that's probably the closest thing to a true explanation. It's a purely genetic line of reasoning which raises a lot of questions though: What's the biological clock that controls the timing of when genes activate? Which/how many genes are responsible for aging and does everyone have all of them? Could animals be selectively bred for longevity indefinitely? Some of these questions might have partial answers already but I don't know them.

Thanks for the paper, it's interesting and I definitely couldn't follow the whole thing. It says at one point that the findings are consistent with the theory that organisms age to make way for their offspring. I've heard of the slightly different version where it's just random genes that don't have any benefit but the downside isn't bad enough for them to be selected against.

[–] fafferlicious@lemmy.world 2 points 5 hours ago

I can potentially shed some additional insight.

Hear shock proteins are known as chaperones in that they are responsible for chaperoning proteins through the folding process. This process is important because I'm biochemistry (that is the chemistry proteins can do) shape is function. If you can look at the shape of a protein (specifically any site that does chemistry or is responsible for protein protein interactions), you can confidently predict the function of the protein.

Shape is function.

So the heat shock proteins (HSPs), are responsible for chaperoning the shape that dictates function. They derived their name because they were first noticed as being more expressed when you subjected cells to elevated heat ( or a heat shock). Increased temperature can cause proteins to have the wrong shape more easily, so the cells respond by making more chaperones!

The research finds that we get fewer copies of those chaperones once the works were capable of procreating. This suggests that while the observable effects of what we call "aging" can be caused by many things. Aging more generally can be understood as a programmed winding down of our self maintenance machinery.

Of course this is just a lens of viewing it from and may not be a complete picture. But it's a very useful and productive one.