Mitochondrial health = longevity foundation 🔋
Healthy mitochondria → efficient energy production + cellular protection
Dysfunction = nearly every age-related disease
Promising interventions: NAD+ precursors, mitophagy enhancers, targeted antioxidants
The question now: how do we translate this into effective therapies?
#Longevity #Mitochondria #AgingBiology #Healthspan #CellularBiology
New 30% mouse lifespan extension paper just dropped!
Another example of rapamycin + something increasing mouse lifespan more than rapamycin or something alone. In this case, the something is trametinib, an anti-cancer drug.
Read more here: https://andrewsteele.co.uk/blog/2025/05/rapamycin-trametinib-cocktail-lifespan-mice/
I had an amazing chat with Davina McCall (!!!) about ageing, menopause, how we could live to 90 in good health, and how much fun it is to give birth?!? (Her words not mine!)
Check it out her new podcast, Begin Again, for the full conversation :)
#aging #ageing #longevity #menopause #longevityscience #agingbiology
Current lab crew:
The new semester has begun, and we have welcomed a new student to the lab🤩
And, we we are already celebrating his birthday during his first week🎉🥳
#GraduateSchool #BiomedicalScience #CellBiology #MolecularBiology #Genetics #Biochemistry #CancerBiology #AgingBiology
A new paper in Nature Aging suggests age-related changed are nonlinear, and change is most rapid around ages 45 and 60.
As someone rapidly approaching the first, biggest hump: gulp!
They did thousands of measurements, and these graphs show how many change at different ages:
You can check out a video of the session here, and my question around 51 minute sums up my thoughts: https://www.weforum.org/open-forum/event_sessions/turning-back-the-clock-the-science-of-ageing/
All the #rapamycin trials in the news this month! This is looking at using it in ME/CFS: https://meassociation.org.uk/2023/11/rapamycin-pilot-treatment-trial-for-me-cfs/
The idea is that ME/CFS may be partly driven by dysfunctional autophagy (a process by which cells recycle waste), and rapa could help. Fascinating, I hope it works!
In a recent podcast, Peter Attia decried some coverage of aging biology as ‘sci-fi’, and said it was impossible to ‘biohack your way to 150’.
I think he’s right.
But I made a video about it because I think he’s missing something very important: https://youtu.be/cCOh8l2NEQg
Semaglutide doesn’t just help with weight loss—it also reduces risk of heart attack, and death from any cause!
More work is needed to find out if these effects are ‘just’ the weight loss or some additional effect. So…could this be an anti-aging drug?! https://www.statnews.com/2023/11/11/heart-attack-stroke-obesity-wegovy-novo-nordisk-select/
Happy Monday #ScienceMastodon! Check out this #ResearchHighlight from Issue 19 of JCS featuring some gorgeous images of #Drosophila Malpighian tubules. Julian Dow and colleagues at the University of Glasgow and University of Copenhagen show that disrupting septate junctions in fruit fly renal tubules produces cell- and tissue-level dysfunction similar to that seen in aged flies. #agingbiology #CellBiology
Dysfunction at cell junctions ages fruit fly renal tubules
https://journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/136/19/e136_e1901/332754/Dysfunction-at-cell-junctions-ages-fruit-fly-renal
Cell–cell junctional integrity is particularly important for the function of epithelial tissues, but is compromised in ageing, leading to dysfunction of epithelial barriers at the cellular and tissue levels. Here (Dornan et al., 2023), Julian Dow and colleagues model age-related dysfunction in the Drosophila melanogaster Malpighian tubules, the fruit fly equivalent of mammalian kidneys, by knocking down expression of the occluding (septate) junction protein Snakeskin (Ssk) in renal secretory cells. Loss of Ssk expression in the Malpighian tubule induces progressive renal dysfunction as a consequence of disrupted septate junction organization between cells. At the cellular level, the authors find that junctional failure is associated with actin cytoskeleton disorganization and loss of apicobasal polarity, which is crucial for maintaining renal solute transport and organismal fluid homeostasis. Further, Malpighian tubule tissue organization is compromised in this model through apparent hyperplasia of renal stem cells and breakdown of paracellular barriers, cumulatively resulting in not only tissue-level renal dysfunction but also increased invasion of bacteria in the Malpighian tubule lumen. Strikingly, these effects might phenocopy effects of ageing on Malpighian tubules in wild-type flies. Going forward, the possible ‘accelerated ageing’ of the Malpighian tubules in this model could help better dissect the sequence of cellular events in epithelial tissues that lead to age-related homeostatic decline and loss of barrier integrity.
Alice Frolov
Andrew Steele
Eishi Noguchi
Amelia Glazier