Masanori Hosokawa
hosokawa@frontier.kyoto-u.ac.jp
REPLY to Dr. K.HIGUCHI
Thank you very much Dr. Higuchi for your comments. My opinion is following;
� To define the words �"aging, senescence, normal, pathological, accelerated, premature, age-related, age-dependent" seems far from the genetic studies of aging. However, I suppose this work is the very thing that is needed in the genetic studies.
� We have learned a lot of things from the studies about SAM strain of mice, and we could not establish the SAM strain and could not analyze the characteristics of senescence of these mice without defining these words. As you pointed out, it is very important to select definite phenotypes in the genetic studies of senescence. It is also important to understand the meaning of the selected phenotypes. For example, what bring the shorter life span, premature aging? accelerated senescence? or pathologies which are not relate to aging process. Aging and senescence is a dynamic phenomenon in the complex system and multiple genes seem to be involved. In such a case, to understand the characteristics of senescence phenotypes is very important. �