odds of it happening eventually, go up the longer you live.
Despite this DNA replication being highly controlled and very accurate, the sheer number of times it is performed in the lifespan of a person (estimated to be 10,000 trillion times!) means the introduction of a significant number of errors into the DNA of some of our cells from this fundamental process is inevitable. source
what even is aging? How do you measure it? Is it really just changes to your DNA? Is that really all of it? I don’t think so.
I think the DNA largely doesn’t mutate through your life. This is evident when you consider that probably a billion generations have passed since the beginning of life, with even more cell divisions, and you’re probably not a cripple because of it, so replication is not inherently doomed to lead to degradation over time.
Instead, it’s probably a mixture of factors. Some cells degrade because of DNA replication errors, some telomeres shorten, but also some kind of chemical clock ticks in our body and that in turn acts as a hormone on cells, making them act like they do in older individuals, on top of that old dysfunctional cells die but aren’t properly eaten up and removed, so they linger around and kinda take up space, then there’s misfolded proteins accumulating and clogging up the system, but it’s a lot of factors, not just a single one.
I guess tackling aging means tackling all of these things, one after another.