noun

• 1Biology
  The condition or process of deterioration with age.

  ‘Although it is characterized as being a deterioration process, senescence is considered to be a highly evolved genetic process.’

  More example sentences

  • ‘But most healthy mammalian cells managed just a few dozen divisions before they stopped, a process known as replicative senescence.’
  • ‘Oxidative processes during senescence involve an increase in enzyme activities generating oxygen radicals and superoxide ions.’
  • ‘A pretreatment of cold-induction temperatures had little effect on the course of tissue senescence under these conditions.’
  • ‘The degradation of proteins and the remobilization of amino acids to developing tissues is a prominent process during senescence.’

  Synonyms

  elderliness, old age, oldness, seniority, maturity, dotage, senility

  1. 1.1Loss of a cell's power of division and growth.
     ‘We have devised a functional approach to clone genes involved in the regulation of cell growth and senescence.’
     More example sentences

     • ‘Mortality barriers to human cell immortalization and effectors of replicative cellular senescence in human cells’
     • ‘The terms senescence and programmed cell death have led to some confusion.’
     • ‘Behind this zone of environmental invasion is a wave of cell senescence, death and necrotrophic disappearance.’
     • ‘Additional carbon would also be released into the rhizosphere with border cell senescence and death.’
     Synonyms

     feebleness, enfeeblement, infirmity, weakness, frailty, debilitation, debility, sickliness, incapacitation, malaise