Aging & Longevity

China has experienced an unprecedented increase in nitrogen deposition over recent decades, threatening ecosystem structure, functioning, and resilience. However, the impact of elevated nitrogen deposition on the date of foliar senescence remains widely unexplored. Using 22,780 in situ observations and long-term satellite-based date of foliar senescence measures for woody species across China, we find that increased nitrogen deposition generally delays date of foliar senescence, with strong...

Although the potential benefits of calorie restriction on human lifespan remain uncertain, it is currently one of the most extensively researched non-genetic approaches to extending both lifespan and healthspan in animals. Calorie restriction offers numerous health benefits, including a reduced incidence of age-related diseases. However, calorie restriction also produces a range of negative effects, which are not fully documented and require further investigation, particularly in humans. As the...

CONCLUSIONS: The present study results indicated that a telecare system establishment for older adults faces numerous obstacles. EHealth initiatives in Iran are in their early stages, but it seems that the prerequisite for establishing telemedicine and telecare is the creation of electronic health records.

Can blocking "jumping genes" treat diseases and aging?

Solid-state lithium metal batteries (SSBs) are promising for electric vehicles because of their potential to provide high energy density and enhanced safety. However, these batteries face short-circuit challenges caused by uncontrolled lithium dendrite growth during cycling. Using operando scanning electron microscopy and phase-field simulations, we determined that failure of SSBs is closely linked to the fatigue of the lithium metal anode, which markedly contributes to interface degradation and...

Peripheral arterial disease is a common vascular disease in the elderly. Therapeutic revascularization, including angiogenic and arteriogenic therapy, is a promising treatment approach for peripheral arterial disease. However, the progress of clinical trials is not ideal, possibly due to insufficiency of preclinical models, such as not taking into account the effect of aging on vascular regeneration. Macrophages are crucial in angiogenesis and arteriogenesis. The aging microenvironment typically...

Moment-to-moment neural variability has been shown to scale positively with the complexity of stimulus input. However, the mechanisms underlying the ability to align variability to input complexity are unknown. Using a combination of behavioral methods, computational modeling, fMRI, MR spectroscopy, and pharmacological intervention, we investigated the role of aging and GABA in neural variability during visual processing. We replicated previous findings that participants expressed higher...

CONCLUSIONS: This paper underscores the need for integrated health policies and multidisciplinary care models to ensure that longer life expectancy is accompanied by better quality of life for older individuals.

Mammalian gut microbiomes are highly dynamic communities that shape and are shaped by host aging, including age-related changes to host immunity, metabolism, and behavior. As such, gut microbial composition may provide valuable information on host biological age. Here, we test this idea by creating a microbiome-based age predictor using 13,563 gut microbial profiles from 479 wild baboons collected over 14 years. The resulting 'microbiome clock' predicts host chronological age. Deviations from...

Skin aging is influenced by both intrinsic and extrinsic factors, particularly UV radiation, and is characterized by an accumulation of senescent cells. Remarkably, exposure to UV can trigger senescence in different skin cell types, including dermal fibroblasts. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying UV-induced senescence and the impact of the related senescence-associated secretory phenotype (SASP) on the homeostasis of the overlying epidermis remain poorly understood. Here, we identified...

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is an age-associated disorder characterized by cognitive decline, with dementia representing the final stage of a complex clinical-biological process rather than simply a more severe form of cognitive decline. Circular RNAs (circRNAs), novel non-coding RNAs, have emerged as key regulators of brain function and associated disorders. This study explores the role of circRNAs in AD by reviewing experimentally validated circRNAs in human and animal models. We identified 10...

With population aging, Alzheimer's disease (AD) is becoming increasingly prevalent, causing great health and economic burdens worldwide. Despite decades of research, there are still no effective disease-modifying treatments for AD, highlighting the urgent need for more in-depth understanding of the disease-causing mechanisms. The brain serotonin (5-HT) neurotransmission system undergoes structural and functional changes in aging and AD, which contributes to cognitive decline and comorbid mood...

A cell is governed by the interaction of myriads of macromolecules. Inferring such a network of interactions has remained an elusive milestone in cellular biology. Building on recent advances in large foundation models and their ability to learn without supervision, we present scPRINT, a large cell model for the inference of gene networks pre-trained on more than 50 million cells from the cellxgene database. Using innovative pretraining tasks and model architecture, scPRINT pushes large...

Little is known, how life-long hyperlipidaemia affects vascular ageing, before atherosclerosis. Here, we characterise effects of mild, life-long hyperlipidaemia on age-dependent endothelial dysfunction (ED) in humanised dyslipidaemia model of E3L.CETP mice. Vascular function was characterised using magnetic resonance imaging in vivo and wire myograph ex vivo. Plasma endothelial biomarkers and non-targeted proteomics in plasma and aorta were analysed. Early atherosclerosis lesions were...

The competitive advantage of mutant hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPCs) underlies clonal hematopoiesis (CH). Drivers of CH include aging and inflammation; however, how CH-mutant cells gain a selective advantage in these contexts is an unresolved question. Using a murine model of CH (Dnmt3a^(R878H/+)), we discover that mutant HSPCs sustain elevated mitochondrial respiration which is associated with their resistance to aging-related changes in the bone marrow microenvironment. Mutant...

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Chromosomal inversion polymorphisms can be common, but the causes of their persistence are often unclear. We propose a model for the maintenance of inversion polymorphism, which requires that some variants contribute antagonistically to two phenotypes, one of which has negative frequency-dependent fitness. These conditions yield a form of frequency-dependent disruptive selection, favoring two predominant haplotypes segregating alleles that favor opposing antagonistic phenotypes. An inversion...

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Environmental enrichment (EE) represents a robust experimental framework exploring the intricate interplay between genes and the environment in shaping brain development and function. EE is recognized as a non-invasive intervention, easily translatable to elderly human cohorts, and extrapolated from research on animal aging models. Age is the most important risk factor for ischemic stroke. Research indicates that EE, characterized by increased sensory, cognitive, and social stimulation, leads to...

H3 K27-altered spinal cord diffuse midline glioma (H3-SCDMG) poses therapeutic challenges. Analysis of 73 clinical samples revealed heightened proliferation in H3-SCDMG versus wild-type tumors, suggesting therapeutic vulnerabilities. Drug screening identified cytarabine (Ara-C) as highly effective in inhibiting proliferation in H3 K27M cell models, recently established patient-derived cells, and patient-derived xenograft models. Mechanistically, Ara-C can suppress tumor growth through DNA...