[cantrevealname]

> Are there any genes that explicitly produce a timing mechanism, and thereby create a built-in notion of aging?

Yes, telomeres.

Telomeres set a count on how many times a cell can divide before it ceases to divide and becoming old and useless; in humans, the count is 40-60 divisions and then the cell essentially dies.

There may be other timing mechanisms that haven't been discovered as well.

[outworlder]

It's less of a timing and more like of a "TTL" of a network packet. If you don't divide you don't use them up, even if you could live a thousand years. If you keep dividing like crazy, it will eventually reach useful DNA and the cell will die.

They seem to be quite specifically an anti-cancer measure.