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Study captures a hidden stress response in roadside orb weavers

First study of how drugs affect behavior of fish in the wild adds to concerns about chemical exposure

Despite missing his entire upper beak, Bruce the kea is winning at life

The aggregation of amyloid proteins into fibrillar and oligomeric aggregates is linked to a number of neurodegenerative diseases. While the disease onset remains elusive in many cases, an understanding of the driving forces for the aggregation may help finding possible causes. While effects on amyloid formation kinetics are more commonly studied, gaining insights into these driving forces require a thermodynamic approach with equilibrium measurements. Here we investigate the temperature...

Embodied accounts of morality propose that corporeal self-awareness helps restrain immoral actions. The Sense of Agency (SoA)-the feeling of controlling one's actions and their consequences-drops when individuals harm others. However, whether modulating SoA shifts moral behavior remains unclear. Parkinson's Disease (PD) offers a unique model to address this question, because dopaminergic dysfunction affects both SoA and moral decision-making. We tested 23 individuals with PD in ON and OFF...

Alendronate effectively inhibits osteoclastic bone resorption and is considered as first line treatment of osteoporosis. Additionally, several studies suggest a beneficial effect on mortality that goes beyond life-extending effects attributed to the well-established fracture risk reduction. However, mechanisms of the mortality reducing effect of bisphosphonates are unclear. The turquoise killifish Nothobranchius furzeri (N. furzeri), a well-known model of accelerated aging, exhibits an extremely...

Hypertension is a globally prevalent cardiovascular disorder with a multifactorial etiology involving genetic variations, environmental cues, aging and their complex interactions. Despite extensive research, the precise molecular mechanisms by which these factors drive hypertension remain incompletely elucidated. Traditional research has focused on classic pathological pathways, including renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system (RAAS) activation, endothelial dysfunction, oxidative stress, chronic...

Atherosclerosis (AS) is a chronic inflammatory vascular disease associated with aging, the initiation and progression of which is closely related to multiple cell death pathways. This review systematically elucidates the specific activation mechanisms and pathological contributions of ferroptosis, pyroptosis, apoptosis, autophagic cell death, necroptosis, NETosis, cuproptosis, parthanatos, and PANoptosis in vascular endothelial cells (VECs), macrophages, vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs), and...

Obesity impairs subcutaneous adipose tissue function, which predisposes to chronic cardiometabolic comorbidities and accelerated biological aging. However, regulatory variants, their target genes and epigenomic landscape underlying this predisposition in each subcutaneous adipose tissue cell-type remain elusive. Our subcutaneous adipose tissue cell-type level cis-expression quantitative trait and colocalization analyses reveal cis-expression quantitative trait locus variants, regulating 279...

The Davos Alzheimer's Collaborative (DAC) Egypt Cohort (DAC-Egypt) is a newly established longitudinal study of cognitive aging in a community-based convenience sample of older Egyptian adults. The cohort's purpose is to characterize trajectories of cognitive decline and dementia risk factors in an understudied population, filling a critical gap in aging research in the Middle East. Participants (n = 1,530) aged 55 and above were recruited via regionally diverse convenience sampling, with...

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a major cause of disability. GBA1 variants are the most common genetic risk factor for PD and increase the risk up to 30-fold. Why only approximately 20% of GBA1 variant carriers develop PD remains unknown. Here, by combining clinical and fecal metagenomics data from 271 patients with PD, from 43 carriers of GBA1 variants not manifesting PD symptoms (GBA-NMC) and from 150 healthy controls, and using an innovative microbiome analysis, combining differential abundance...

Biological ageing is often approached through its underlying mechanisms and their therapeutic potential. Yet age-related decline arises from multiple processes shaped by evolutionary constraints and finite investment in somatic maintenance. Coupling among these processes is heterogeneous: some are tightly linked through shared signalling networks, others are indirectly related and some retain substantial autonomy. Interventions that modulate biomarkers of biological age or individual hallmarks...

Lycium barbarum (goji berry) has long been consumed as a food, and its water-soluble polysaccharides (LBPs) are proposed as key bioactive constituents. Here, we evaluated three L. barbarum fractions in Caenorhabditis elegans and subsequently focused on purified LBPs, which showed the most consistent pro-longevity phenotype in preliminary screening. LBPs (700 μg/mL) increased mean lifespan by 20.67% (p < 0.01) and improved multiple healthspan-related outcomes, including locomotion, resistance to...

The Davos Alzheimer's Collaborative (DAC) Egypt Cohort (DAC-Egypt) is a newly established longitudinal study of cognitive aging in a community-based convenience sample of older Egyptian adults. The cohort's purpose is to characterize trajectories of cognitive decline and dementia risk factors in an understudied population, filling a critical gap in aging research in the Middle East. Participants (n = 1,530) aged 55 and above were recruited via regionally diverse convenience sampling, with...

No abstract

Double-stranded nucleic acids can undergo transitions from canonical B/A-forms to alternate left-handed Z-DNA/Z-RNA (Z-NAs). Z-NAs are implicated in processes such as neuroinflammation in Alzheimer's disease, Lupus Erythematosus, microbial biofilms, and type I interferon-mediated human pathologies. Since endogenous Z-NA sensors like the Zα domain can induce B-to-Z transitions, monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) Z-D11 and Z22 have been regarded as conformation-specific tools to confirm Z-NA in situ,...

Skeletal muscle is a fundamental tissue as it is found throughout the body, sustains posture, and produces movement. Yet, skeletal muscle disorders, such as myopathies, affect a large percentage of the population, degrading an individual's quality of life. A recent study links myopathy progression to the decline in chaperone-mediated autophagy that occurs during aging. Underscoring the importance of a balanced CMA pathway in maintaining skeletal muscle function and integrity, the study also...

In an ever-changing environment, the ability to adapt behavior based on feedback is a crucial skill. Although this process is assumed to decline with age, initial evidence suggests that emotional information processing may help buffer against these age-related impairments. We therefore conducted a probabilistic learning task with emotional faces in two varying emotional intensities (weak vs. strong) to investigate whether healthy younger and older adults would benefit from strong emotional...

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder. While previous studies have reported a high prevalence of dementia diagnoses in the ASD population, the risk of dementia-related neurodegeneration remains poorly understood. This study aimed to assess dementia-sensitive composite measures of brain structure and brain age across the lifespan in an ASD cohort (ages 7-73) to investigate neuroanatomical features linked to neurodegenerative vulnerability. The composite score and brain...

CONCLUSION: We propose a comprehensive framework comprising three components: cohort setting, measuring contributing factors, and full assessment. This framework sets the stage for a unified, supranational protocol that harmonizes survey methods across countries, integrates multidisciplinary perspectives, and adopts a longitudinal approach. It would enable larger sample sizes and more robust statistical analyses, allowing researchers to explore complex relationships and derive more accurate...