Fig. 1

Biomedical issues of the hypothesis. When mosaicism is detected, therapeutic interventions might be applied to decrease the level of the mosaicism (green arrows). Otherwise, the level of mosaicism is more likely to increase (red arrows) through the interaction of unstable cellular genomes with the environment. Thus, a disease associated with somatic (chromosomal) mosaicism would exhibit accelerated progression without the interventions (i.e. the increase of mosaicism level) in contrast to slow progression resulted from therapeutic interventions aimed at the decrease in mosaicism level (1). Somatic mosaicism may be an important element of pathogenic cascade in complex diseases; the increase of mosaicism level is likely to increase the risk for these diseases, whereas the decrease of mosaicism level is likely to decrease the risk for these diseases (2). Similarly, the risk of cancer (3) and reproductive risks (4) might correlate with changing of mosaicism levels. According to a previous cytogenomic hypothesis [68], the severity of behavioral problems is able to be modulated by changing in levels of somatic mosaicism as depicted in (5). Since aging is mediated by the accumulation of somatic mutation (i.e. the increase of mosaicism level) [63, 69,70,71,72,73,74], it is highly likely that therapeutic interventions aimed at the decrease of mosaicism level might cause rejuvenation (6). Finally, taking into account (1–6), we hypothesize that the increase of mosaicism level is associated with decreased lifespan whereas the interventions aimed at the decrease of mosaicism level might increase the lifespan. * — mosaicism level detected in an individual during molecular (cytogenetic) analysis