Universal Relation for Life-span Energy Consumption in Living Organisms: Insights for the origin of aging

Abstract

Metabolic energy consumption has long been thought to play a major role in the aging process (1). Across species, a gram of tissue on average expends about the same amount of energy during life-span (2). Energy restriction has also been shown that increases maximum life-span (3) and retards age-associated changes (4). However, there are significant exceptions to a universal energy consumption during life-span, mainly coming from the inter-class comparison (5, 6). Here we present a unique relation for life-span energy consumption, valid for ∼300 species representing all classes of living organisms, from unicellular ones to the largest mammals. The relation has an average scatter of only 0.3 dex, with 95% of the organisms having departures less than a factor ofπfrom the relation, despite the ∼20 orders of magnitude difference in body mass, reducing any possible inter-class variation in the relation to only a geometrical factor. This result can be interpreted as supporting evidence for the existence of an approximately constant total number Nr∼ 108of respiration cycles per lifetime for all organisms, effectively predetermining the extension of life by the basic energetics of respiration.