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. 2021 Aug 27;9:688788. doi: 10.3389/fcell.2021.688788

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Copyright © 2021 Gems, Kern, Nour and Ezcurra.

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

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Source-to-sink biomass conversion is not disposable soma. (A) Disposable soma. Here a primary cause of aging is stochastic molecular damage accumulation, prevented by somatic maintenance processes. Diversion of resources from somatic maintenance to reproduction provides a reproductive fitness benefit, but allows molecular damage to accumulation, causing aging. (B) Source-to-sink biomass conversion. Here a primary cause of aging is programmatic, active self-destruction of organs to release resources for reproduction.