Michael R. Rose (born 25 July 1955) is a Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of California, Irvine.
The genes are favored by natural selection as a result of their early-life benefits, and the costs that accrue much later appear as incidental side-effects that we identify as aging.
Rose's laboratory has conducted the longest-running experimental evolution experiment designed to test the theory of antagonistic pleiotropy.
The long-lived flies show other weaknesses that would make them poor competitors in the wild, and perhaps these traits are the true areas of antagonistic pleiotropy.
Rose contends that a correct understanding of Hamilton's equations through mathematical modeling show that protagonistic pleiotropy is plausible.
[2] According to Rose, relative to the age of reproductive maturity a transition to the late-life stage of life occurs much later in humans than in the populations of flies for which there are data.
Rose suggests that human populations' adoption of agriculture led to more children surviving to adulthood, and to reproduction occurring later in life.
[2] British Commonwealth Scholar, 1976–79; NATO Science Fellow, 1979-1981, NSERC of Canada University Research Fellow, 1981–88; President's Prize, American Society of Naturalists, 1992; Excellence in Teaching Award, University of California, Irvine Biological Sciences, 1996; Busse Prize, World Congress of Gerontology, 1997.