Figure 2.

Mechanisms of aging. The mechanisms thought to underlie the aging process include proteostatic dysfunction, inhibition of autophagy, mitochondrial dysfunction (which results in increased oxidative stress), stem cell exhaustion, telomere erosion, senescence (and the associated senescence-associated secretory program, or SASP), epigenetic alterations, DNA damage and genomic instability, and nutrient signaling dysfunction. These various mechanisms often increase inflammation, which leads to inflamm-aging. Modified from [15,21] and created with Biorender.com.