Sirtuins
Companies accumulate 'DNA damage' too: bugs in production code, security vulnerabilities unpatched for months, architectural decisions from Year 1 that no longer make sense.
Every cell experiences 10,000 DNA lesions per day. Sirtuins are the repair crew. Companies that skip maintenance accumulate risk until one mutation kills them.
Every cell experiences 10,000 DNA lesions per day from oxidative damage, spontaneous depurination, and copying errors. Sirtuins are the repair crew - ancient NAD+-dependent enzymes that activate when NAD+ levels rise during caloric restriction (less glucose consumption means more NAD+ available).
SIRT1 compacts chromatin, silencing inflammatory genes that accelerate aging. SIRT3 inhabits mitochondria, reducing reactive oxygen species production by 40%. SIRT6 repairs DNA double-strand breaks - without it, mice die at 4 weeks from genomic instability.
Yeast with extra SIR2 (sirtuin homolog) live 30% longer even without caloric restriction. Worms with extra sir-2.1 live 20% longer. Sirtuins don't clean up damage after it happens (that's autophagy) - they prevent damage and repair what slips through.
Business Application of Sirtuins
Companies accumulate 'DNA damage' too: bugs in production code, security vulnerabilities unpatched for months, architectural decisions from Year 1 that no longer make sense. This is technical debt. Sirtuins are maintenance, refactoring, security patches, infrastructure investment. Companies that skip maintenance don't collapse immediately - they accumulate risk until one mutation kills them (like Equifax's unpatched vulnerability losing 147M records).