Aging & Longevity

Dietary restriction (DR) delays aging, but the mechanism remains unclear. We identified polymorphisms in mtd, the fly homolog of OXR1, which influenced lifespan and mtd expression in response to DR. Knockdown in adulthood inhibited DR-mediated lifespan extension in female flies. We found that mtd/OXR1 expression declines with age and it interacts with the retromer, which regulates trafficking of proteins and lipids. Loss of mtd/OXR1 destabilized the retromer, causing improper protein trafficking...

The aging brain is highly vulnerable to cellular stress, and neurons employ numerous mechanisms to combat neurotoxic proteins and promote healthy brain aging. The RNA modification m⁶ A is highly enriched in the Drosophila brain and is critical for the acute heat stress response of the brain. Here we examine m⁶ A in the fly brain with the chronic stresses of aging and degenerative disease. m⁶ A levels dynamically increased with both age and disease in the brain, marking integral neuronal identity...

Organizers hope to save long-running project on canine aging and longevity.

Circadian cycles of sleep:wake and gene expression change with age in all organisms examined. Metabolism is also under robust circadian regulation, but little is known about how metabolic cycles change with age and whether these contribute to the regulation of behavioral cycles. To address this gap, we compared cycling of metabolites in young and old Drosophila and found major age-related variations. A significant model separated the young metabolic profiles by circadian timepoint, but could not...

Nutrition profoundly shapes immunity and inflammation across the lifespan of mammals, from pre- and post-natal periods to later life. Emerging insights into diet-microbiota interactions indicate that nutrition has a dominant influence on the composition-and metabolic output-of the intestinal microbiota, which in turn has major consequences for host immunity and inflammation. Here, we discuss recent findings that support the concept that dietary effects on microbiota-derived metabolites potently...

The ubiquitin-proteasome system is a vital protein degradation system that is involved in various cellular processes, such as cell cycle progression, apoptosis, and differentiation. Dysregulation of this system has been implicated in numerous diseases, including cancer, vascular disease, and neurodegenerative disorders. Induction of cellular senescence in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a potential anticancer strategy, but the precise role of the ubiquitin-proteasome system in cellular...

Accumulation of advanced glycation end products (AGEs) on biopolymers accompanies cellular aging and drives poorly understood disease processes. Here, we studied how AGEs contribute to development of early onset Parkinson's Disease (PD) caused by loss-of-function of DJ1, a protein deglycase. In induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC)-derived midbrain organoid models deficient for DJ1 activity, we find that lysosomal proteolysis is impaired, causing AGEs to accumulate, α-synuclein (α-syn)...

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Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) in the subarachnoid space around the brain has long been known to drain through the lymphatics to cervical lymph nodes^(1-17), but the connections and regulation have been challenging to identify. Here, using fluorescent CSF tracers in Prox1-GFP lymphatic reporter mice^(18), we found that the nasopharyngeal lymphatic plexus is a major hub for CSF outflow to deep cervical lymph nodes. This plexus had unusual valves and short lymphangions but no smooth-muscle coverage,...

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How do APOE4 and aging, two of the strongest risk factors for late-onset Alzheimer's disease (AD), promote disease progression? In this issue of Immunity, Millet et al. examine microglia in AD mice bearing different APOE alleles at distinct ages and identify a conserved exhausted-like microglial state enriched in very elderly and APOE4 AD brains.

Aging in humans is associated with abdominal distribution and remodeling of body fat and a parallel gradual increase in the prevalence of metabolic diseases such as obesity, type 2 diabetes mellitus and fatty liver disease, as well as the risk of developing metabolic complications. Current treatments might be improved by understanding the detailed mechanisms underlying the onset of age-related metabolic disorders. Neddylation, a post-translational modification that adds the ubiquitin-like...

Ovarian aging leads to diminished fertility, dysregulated endocrine signaling and increased chronic disease burden. These effects begin to emerge long before follicular exhaustion. Female humans experience a sharp decline in fertility around 35 years of age, which corresponds to declines in oocyte quality. Despite a growing body of work, the field lacks a comprehensive cellular map of the transcriptomic changes in the aging mouse ovary to identify early drivers of ovarian decline. To fill this...

Epigenetic 'clocks' based on DNA methylation have emerged as the most robust and widely used aging biomarkers, but conventional methods for applying them are expensive and laborious. Here we develop tagmentation-based indexing for methylation sequencing (TIME-seq), a highly multiplexed and scalable method for low-cost epigenetic clocks. Using TIME-seq, we applied multi-tissue and tissue-specific epigenetic clocks in over 1,800 mouse DNA samples from eight tissue and cell types. We show that...

The phytohormone cytokinin has various roles in plant development, including meristem maintenance, vascular differentiation, leaf senescence, and regeneration. Prior investigations have revealed that cytokinin acts via a phosphorelay similar to the two-component system by which bacteria sense and respond to external stimuli. The eventual targets of this phosphorelay are type-B ARABIDOPSIS RESPONSE REGULATORS (B-ARRs), containing the conserved N-terminal receiver domain (RD), middle DNA binding...

Cellular senescence is acknowledged as a key contributor to organismal ageing and late-life disease. Though popular, the study of senescence in vitro can be complicated by the prolonged and asynchronous timing of cells committing to it and by its paracrine effects. To address these issues, we repurposed a small molecule inhibitor, inflachromene (ICM), to induce senescence to human primary cells. Within 6 days of treatment with ICM, senescence hallmarks, including the nuclear eviction of HMGB1...

Recent studies have shown that the hypothalamus functions as a control center of aging in mammals that counteracts age-associated physiological decline through inter-tissue communications. We have identified a key neuronal subpopulation in the dorsomedial hypothalamus (DMH), marked by Ppp1r17 expression (DMH^(Ppp1r17) neurons), that regulates aging and longevity in mice. DMH^(Ppp1r17) neurons regulate physical activity and WAT function, including the secretion of extracellular nicotinamide...

Microglia harness an unutilized health-promoting potential in age-related neurodegenerative and neuroinflammatory diseases, conditions like progressive multiple sclerosis (MS). Our research unveils an microglia population emerging in the cortical brain regions of aging mice, marked by ERK1/2, Akt, and AMPK phosphorylation patterns and a transcriptome indicative of activated autophagy - a process critical for cellular adaptability. By deleting the core autophagy gene Ulk1 in microglia, we reduce...

Drone-based inspections provide an efficient and flexible approach to assessing aging infrastructures while prioritizing safety. Here, we present a pioneering framework that employs drone cameras for high-precision displacement measurement and achieves sub-millimeter accuracy, meeting the requirements for on-site inspections. Inspired by the principles of human auditory equilibrium, we have developed an effective scheme using a group of strategical reference markers on the bridge girders to...

Light trapping enhancement by nanostructures is ubiquitous in engineering applications, for example, in improving highly-efficient concentrating solar thermal (CST) technologies. However, most nano-engineered coatings and metasurfaces are not scalable to large surfaces ( > 100 m²) and are unstable at elevated temperatures ( > 850 ^(°)C), hindering their wide-spread adoption in CST. Here, we propose a scalable layer nano-architecture that can significantly enhance the solar absorption of an...