Live Young, Die Later: Senescence in the Penna Model of Aging

Cellular senescence is thought to play a major role in age-related diseases, which cause nearly 67% of all human deaths worldwide. Recent research in mice showed that exercising mice had higher levels of telomerase, an enzyme that helps maintain telomere length, than non-exercising mice. A commonly used model for biological aging was proposed by Penna. I propose two modifications of the Penna model that incorporate senescence and find analytical steady state solutions following Coe, Mao and Cates. I find that models corresponding to delayed senescence have younger populations that live longer.