Reliability concept as a trend in biophysics of aging.

The vitality of a living system is determined by the reliability characteristics of its functional elements at different organizational levels--from enzymes up to the organism as a whole. The new field of biophysics, in dealing with the problem of reliability, incorporates theoretical and experimental studies on quantitative characteristics and mechanisms of failure and renewal processes in biological systems. It also includes the elaboration of methods for testing the reliability and predicting the failures in biological systems. Apart from the formal fitting to the mortality data, the theory of reliability can serve as an investigative approach for searching for realistic mechanisms of aging.