“All of this time I had been thinking about telomere maintenance in terms of the minuscule cellular molecular structures that they are, and the ...
The Hallmarks of Aging: Telomere Attrition
Part of the Hallmarks of Aging series. What–and why–are telomeres? The chromosomes that store your genetic information are capped at each ...
In the media: Mouse mugshots, metabolic mayhem and metformin
Is a picture worth a thousand biomarkers? MouseAGE, the AI that wants to eyeball the age of rodents, thinks so. Dr. Craig Thomspon talks cancer metabo...
Longevity orthologs: How far from the apple to the tree?
Laboratories studying the biology of aging are a menagerie of creatures great and small. From unicellular yeast and nematodes, all the way up to prima...
No more eraserhead: Will blocking epigenetic erasers prevent Alzheimer’s disease?
Just like a well-folded sheet of paper, a tightly coiled segment of DNA doesn’t have much chance of being read. Our cells use this to their advantage,...
Research roundup: Scientists stop premature aging in its tracks, and more
Researchers from Houston Methodist Research Institute took cells from patients with progeria, a devastating condition that causes premature aging, and...
What’s eating you?
Many people think of sleep almost as if it were a state of suspended animation, like turning off a computer so that it can cool down. But while your c...
When cancer was just a twinkle in your epigenome’s eye
A friendly genie appears in a puff of smoke and tells you that you’ll develop cancer 20 years hence. However, he offers to send you back in time to an...
Pet dogs on rapamycin are pictures of health
In the lab, rapamycin is a star geroprotector. In addition to boosting lifespan even when used in late life, it’s also been found specifically t...
Metformin: Multipurpose marvel, or medical misfire?
Much rests on metformin’s shoulders: as the first drug to begin clinical trials for preventing multiple age-related diseases, it could soon become the...