Aging & Longevity

A decline in food-searching behavior of post-reproductive animals can benefit the population and possibly be programmed by the genome despite its detrimental effect on an individual. We investigated the genetic program of age-dependent decline in chemotaxis behavior toward an odorant secreted from bacterial food in C. elegans. Through a novel forward genetic screen, we identified the gene encoding a nuclear hormone receptor, nhr-76, whose mutants ameliorate the age-dependent chemotaxis decline....

Early detection and late-stage cell fate assessment are key factors to develop therapeutic strategies, although current methods cannot capture early responses or distinguish multiple injury states, especially in ultraviolet-visible (UV-vis)-sensitive cells. Here, we introduce a method to simultaneously detect variations in RNA and DNA under near-infrared photoexcitation. Using a pyrazinacene-based probe (TEG(8)-N14), we unexpectedly achieved discrimination of multiple cell states, including...

No abstract

We establish a click reaction-based workflow (tissue clearing coupled with click-chemistry in 3D, C⁴-3D) to visualize 5-ethynyl-2'-deoxyuridine (EdU) in whole mouse brain tissue cleared by CUBIC, iDisco+, and PACT. C⁴-3D was compatible with immunostaining, nuclear staining, and a fluorescent reporter mouse. Machine learning-based identification of EdU-positive nuclear coordinates followed by normalization for the Allen Brain Atlas revealed that proliferating neuronal progenitors were enriched in...

Extracellular matrix homeostasis is crucial for hyaline cartilage integrity, however, the mechanism of extracellular matrix homeostasis in hyaline cartilage is poorly understood. Single-cell sequencing shows that VGLL4 is highly expressed in chondrocytes but declines after injury/aging. VGLL4 deficiency impairs collagen/elastin formation, causes extracellular matrix disorganization and osteoarthritis in Col2-CreERT2; Vgll4^(fl/fl) mice, and is exacerbated by destabilization of the medial...

Tissue structure and molecular circuitry in the colon can be profoundly impacted by systemic age-related effects but many of the underlying molecular cues remain unclear. Here, we build a cellular and spatial atlas of the colon across three anatomical regions and 11 age groups, encompassing ~1,500 mouse gut tissues profiled by spatial transcriptomics and ~400,000 single nucleus RNA-sequencing profiles. We develop a computational framework, cSplotch, which learns a hierarchical Bayesian model of...

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Relative fat mass (RFM) is a more accurate measure of body fat percentage than body mass index (BMI). However, its association with cardiometabolic multimorbidity (CMM) and its predictive value have not been examined. This study evaluated and compared the associations and predictive utility of RFM and BMI for CMM. We analyzed data from 3,348 adults (mean age 64 years; 45.1% male) in the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing who were free of hypertension, coronary heart disease, diabetes, and...

Torque Teno Virus (TTV) is a widespread commensal virus within the human virome, characterized by a high prevalence in human population and an unclear pathogenic role. Over the past three decades, TTV has garnered increasing attention due to its ability to establish lifelong chronic viremia, which intriguingly fluctuates among individuals in relation to immune competence status, with a typical peak after an organ transplantation, followed by a plateau and a slow decrease. The regulatory...

CONCLUSION: The prevalence of depressive symptoms among older women in institutional care in south-western Poland is moderate. The intensity of these depressive symptoms lowers the overall quality of life of care centre residents, as well as their self-assessment of health, and affects their quality of life in the psychological, social, and environmental domains.

CONCLUSIONS: The disability risk prediction model provided a real-time digital prediction mechanism to identify high-risk groups of disability among elderly adults, serving as a valuable decision-making tool for disability prevention and the allocation of medical care resources. Developing prevention and treatment strategies targeting the chronic diseases identified as significant contributors to disability by the predictive model might lead to more effective prevention of disability in elderly...

CONCLUSION: Duration of symptoms before the commencement of treatment and illness cognition play a significant role in the quality of life of older adults. It is recommended that caregivers of older adults and clinicians consider these factors to improve illness progression and quality of life among the elderly. Qualitative inquiry suggests the need for increased public awareness and stakeholder involvement in interventions for the elderly.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Seeking to extend previous research on older adults' active travel, this paper focused on the travel duration and neighborhood streets. With an emphasis on the older adults and streets in ancient towns, empirical data were collected in Daokou Ancient Town in China. The aim is to identify environmental attributes promoting active travel.

CONCLUSION: Integrating the SSM Fisior^(®) program into physical activity workshops enhances muscle activity and functional performance, in terms of Timed Up and Go Test, muscle strength, functionality and calf circumference, supporting its value in promoting healthy aging.

CONCLUSIONS: Frailty prevalence was high among older adults and was significantly associated with low physical activity and low socioeconomic status. These findings highlight critical challenges for Ecuador's public and private healthcare systems in implementing proactive measures to delay the onset of frailty and improve quality of life in this population.

Our understanding of aging has grown through the study of systems biology, including single-cell analysis, proteomics and metabolomics. Studies in lab organisms in controlled environments, while powerful and complex, fall short of capturing the breadth of genetic and environmental variation in nature. Thus, there is now a major effort in geroscience to identify aging biomarkers that might be applied across the diversity of humans and other free-living species. To meet this challenge, the Dog...

Macroautophagy (hereafter referred to as autophagy) is widely recognized as a central pathway for the clearance of protein aggregates and the maintenance of proteostasis. However, a recent study by Murley et al. challenges this conventional view. Using a Caenorhabditis elegans L1 arrest aging model, the authors found that autophagy activation impedes rejuvenation by promoting the accumulation of intra- 10 lysosomal protein aggregates and inducing lysosomal membrane damage. This unexpected...

Aging and obesity are associated with pro-inflammatory changes in adipose tissue. Overlapping mechanisms, such as the infiltration of inflammatory macrophages and T cells into visceral adipose tissue, have been implicated in contributing to inflammation. However, a comparative analysis of both states is needed to identify distinct regulatory targets. Here, we performed single-cell RNA sequencing of stromal vascular fractions (SVF) isolated from gonadal white adipose tissue (gWAT) of young mice...

Caloric restriction (CR) with fasting extends lifespan but is difficult to maintain in humans. Here, we compared conventional CR with periods of fasting to an ad libitum-fed low-protein, high-carbohydrate (LPHC) diet diluted 25% with non-digestible fibre. Both approaches similarly enhanced longevity and metabolic health in mice relative to a control diet. Proteomic analysis of liver tissue revealed that CR increased proteins associated with energy and mitochondrial pathways. By contrast, the...

Fasting-based interventions are gaining momentum as strategies to modulate longevity. Conversely, the same metabolic adaptations that once ensured survival during starvation now contribute to the global obesity epidemic. While previous studies have characterized metabolic changes during fasting, few have examined the refeeding phase, and most lack an integrated analysis of key hormonal and metabolic regulators, including insulin, leptin, adiponectin, free T3, FGF21, and the plasma metabolome. To...