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DNA damages, as well as mutations, increase with age. It is believed that these result from increased genotoxic stress and decreased capacity for DNA repair. The two causes are not independent, DNA damage can, for example, through mutations, compromise the capacity for DNA repair, which in turn increases the amount of unrepaired DNA damage. Despite this vicious circle, we ask, can cells maintain a high DNA repair capacity for some time or is repair capacity bound to continuously decline with age? We here present a simple mathematical model for ageing in multicellular systems where cells subjected to DNA damage can undergo full repair, go apoptotic, or accumulate mutations thus reducing DNA repair capacity. Our model predicts that at the tissue level repair rate does not continuously decline with age, but instead has a characteristic extended period of high and non-declining DNA repair capacity, followed by a rapid decline. Furthermore, the time of high functionality increases, and consequently slows down the ageing process, if the DNA repair mechanism itself is vulnerable to DNA damages. Although counterintuitive at first glance, a fragile repair mechanism allows for a faster removal of compromised cells, thus freeing the space for healthy peers. This finding might be a first step toward understanding why a mutation in single DNA repair protein (e.g. Wrn or Blm) is not buffered by other repair proteins and therefore, leads to severe ageing disorders.

Pathogens and parasites are ubiquitous in the living world, being limited only by availability of suitable hosts. The ability to transmit a particular disease depends on competing infections as well as on the status of host immunity. Multiple diseases compete for the same resource and their fate is coupled to each other. Such couplings have many facets, for example cross-immunization between related influenza strains, mutual inhibition by killing the host, or possible even a mutual catalytic effect if host immunity is impaired. We here introduce a minimal model for an unlimited number of unrelated pathogens whose interaction is simplified to simple mutual exclusion. The model incorporates an ongoing development of host immunity to past diseases, while leaving the system open for emergence of new diseases. The model exhibits a rich dynamical behavior with interacting infection waves, leaving broad trails of immunization in the host population. This obtained immunization pattern depends only on the system size and on the mutation rate that initiates new diseases.