Why living organisms inevitably die and what death even means in terms of physics and dynamical systems are still open questions despite the vast advances in molecular biology. Revealing how some cells die — not through biochemical processes but physics — would help to answer them."

Source : Nature, Nature physics, news & views, article, May 2024

Simply put, the physical reasons why any cell with access to a reasonable amount of resources, and with a reasonable environment, might spontaneously lose its viability, are largely unknown.

If the cell is a crucial part of an organism, or if groups of cells all 'decide' to expire around the same time, the organism in question may well die.

Cell-death has been very extensively investigated for many decades, and much progress has been made in identifying different modes of cell-death (ref.) but :

Despite these recent advances, why death is inevitable for living organisms based on physical laws remains unexplained."

[ Source as above ]

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