aging – Quanta Magazine

Cells Across the Body Talk to Each Other About Aging

Viviane Callier — Mon, 08 Jan 2024 15:08:44 +0000

Aging can seem like an unregulated process: As time marches along, our cells and bodies inevitably accumulate dings and dents that cause dysfunctions, failures and ultimately death. However, in 1993 a discovery upended that interpretation of events. Researchers found a mutation in a single gene that doubled a worm’s life span; subsequent work showed that related genes, all involved in the response...

Source

Ants Live 10 Times Longer by Altering Their Insulin Responses

Viviane Callier — Tue, 10 Jan 2023 16:46:31 +0000

Animals that produce many offspring tend to have short lives, while less prolific species tend to live longer. Cockroaches lay hundreds of eggs while living less than a year. Mice have dozens of babies during their year or two of life. Humpback whales produce only one calf every two or three years and live for decades. The rule of thumb seems to reflect evolutionary strategies that channel...

Source

The Year in Biology

John Rennie — Wed, 21 Dec 2022 14:34:24 +0000

Our memories are the cornerstone of our identity. Their importance is a big part of what makes Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia so cruel and poignant. It’s why we’ve hoped so desperately for science to deliver a cure for Alzheimer’s, and why it is so frustrating and tragic that useful treatments have been slow to emerge. Great excitement therefore surrounded the announcement in...

Source

What Causes Alzheimer’s? Scientists Are Rethinking the Answer.

Yasemin Saplakoglu — Thu, 08 Dec 2022 16:33:19 +0000

It’s often subtle at first. A lost phone. A forgotten word. A missed appointment. By the time a person walks into a doctor’s office, worried about signs of forgetfulness or failing cognition, the changes to their brain have been long underway — changes that we don’t yet know how to stop or reverse. Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia, has no cure. “There’s not much you can do.

Source

Epigenetic ‘Clocks’ Predict Animals’ True Biological Age

Ingrid Wickelgren — Wed, 17 Aug 2022 14:06:38 +0000

This time a year ago, Steve Horvath was looking for pangolin DNA. The ancient scaly anteater would be a first for his collection, which was then about 200 mammals strong. “I didn’t have any of that order, which is why I desperately wanted them,” he recalled. Since the summer of 2017, Horvath, who until recently was an anti-aging researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles...

Source