Aging is the process that renders living organisms susceptible with time. This process can be due to internal or external factors that ultimately lead to the death of the organism involved. It is therefore a lifetime process that living organisms undergo. This process is however natural and biological. Aging increases the chances of death and limits the immunity of the organisms against adversities like death. It increases the pathology of age and ultimately shortens the lifespan of an organism. It is a gradual process, deleterious, universal, and inherent (Curtis & Brun 2010).
Aging is therefore a continuous deleterious process, which leads to the death of organisms. It occurs in Eukaryotic organisms when they undergo asymmetric cell division. This is because the daughter cells from the parent cell have different constituents. When this is the case, the parent cells cannot continue surviving. Organisms that undergo asymmetrical cell division produce identical Daugherty cells that are fully compact. These daughter cells are immortal and can carry on the process of reproduction by dividing indefinitely. A bacterium is one of the organisms that undergo asymmetric division of cells hence does not undergo aging. This hypothesis has however come under criticism from several scholars. They have done empirical studies to prove that bacteria undergo aging (Stewart et al. 2005).
Scientists observed one Bactria that made them think that Bactria does age. First, asymmetric cell division happened in the bacteria studied. During cytokinesis one of the daughter cells would asymmetrically take with it, one older pole. This observation caused several questions about aging in bacteria. There was therefore the need to know whether a bacterium loses fitness when it undergoes cell division and if aging leads to death or improved adaptability and fitness. Getting answers to these questions and the overall explanation of aging in bacteria will help to put the stalemate into perspective. I, therefore, turn my attention to vindicate the critiques of this hypothesis (Curtis & Brun 2010).
Aging is one of the characteristics of living organisms albeit not universal. A gram-negative bacterium came to the attention of scientists when it underwent asymmetric cell division. The Bactria morphological types are two. Its first cell is plankton with a single flagellum. Its pole has multiple parts. Secondly, is the stalked cell, which is sessile albeit it lacks flagellum. It however has a stalk extension. The tip has a holdfast organelle (Mayr, 1997).
When a stalk cell undergoes asymmetric cell division, it produces a stalk cell and a second cell. Whenever this bacteria’s cell elongates, the opposite pole of the stalk produces a flagellum. The process continues as the elongation continues producing another asymmetric cell that has two morphological parts. The second cell on the other hand turns to the stalk cell first so that it can divide. This bacteria seemed to be different or unique rather (Mayr, 1997). This is because eukaryote cells usually undergo four steps in the division. The preparatory phase starts then the second stage where DNA replication takes place. The third step is preliminary preparation for the last step which is full cell division. In this bacterium, it is evident that the DNA process stopped because the stalk cell turned out to be incompetent (Mayr, 2005).
The gene in this bacterium made the flagellum destroyed. The stalk cell brought the ability for DNA replication. The bacterium was therefore aging. When the successive division of the stalk led to its deterioration, aging was happening parallel to it (Mayr, 2005). Following this empirical study, it is right to conclude that bacteria undergo aging (Arking, 2006).
References
Arking, R 2006, The biology of aging: observations and principles, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Curtis, P, D & Brun, Y, V 2010, Getting in the loop: regulation of development in Caulobacter crescentus, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Mayr, E, W 2005, Do Bacteria age, Routledge, London.
Mayr, E, W 1997, This is biology: Science of the living world, Harvard University Press, New York.
Stewart, E, J, Madden, R, Paul, G, & Taddei, F. 2005. Aging and death in an organism that reproduces by morphologically symmetric division, Cambridge University Press, New York.