Aging & Longevity

Variability in Alzheimer's disease (AD) clinical presentation complicates mechanistic studies and therapeutic outcome prediction. Brain protein aggregate load does not directly correlate with clinical symptoms; however, different subtypes of AD have been reported to exhibit structural variation (polymorphism) of aggregates. Little is known about the structural diversity of the deposits in cognitively normal aged brains. This study investigates the structural heterogeneity of amyloid aggregates...

Nucleocytoplasmic transport is a central but underappreciated component of the proteostasis network as it controls the trafficking and partitioning of proteins between the nucleus and cytoplasm through the nuclear pore complex (NPC). Transport of large proteins across the NPC is mediated by karyopherins, a conserved family of importins and exportins that function through a Ran GTPase-dependent cycle. Beyond their canonical transport activities, karyopherins can directly contribute to...

Hypothesized to be a diet-derived 'longevity vitamin', Ergothioneine (ET) is increasingly recognized for its potential to modulate cellular homeostasis and support healthy ageing in preclinical models. This systematic review, encompassing evidence from 2005 to 2025, investigates ET's unique pharmacokinetics mediated by the OCTN1 (SLC22A4) transporter, which ensures its selective accumulation in tissues susceptible to age-related oxidative decline. Beyond its role as a secondary antioxidant...

Water diffusion gives rise to micron-scale sensitivity of diffusion MRI (dMRI) to cellular-level tissue structure. Precision medicine and quantitative imaging depend on uncovering the information content of dMRI and establishing its parsimonious hardware-independent fingerprint. Based on the rotational SO(3) symmetry, we study the geometry of the dMRI signal and the topology of its acquisition, identify irreducible components and a full set of invariants for the cumulant tensors, and relate them...

Macroautophagy/autophagy is a process conserved across eukaryotes that maintains cellular homeostasis by delivering cellular components to the vacuole or lysosome for further breakdown and recycling. Although the molecular mechanisms regulating autophagosome formation have been extensively studied, those underlying the modulation of autophagic body degradation in plant cells remain unclear. Here, we determined that VAB1 (V-ATPase catalytic subunit B1), a direct target of SINAT (SEVEN IN ABSENTIA...

A growing body of research is focusing on how music, technology, and neuroscience can converge to promote healthy ageing and counteract pathological decline. In particular, music interventions for older adults have been garnering increasing attention, with numerous reports showing positive effects of music on various health outcomes, including psychological well-being, cognitive function, physiological responses, quality of life, and overall well-being. In this context, the European...

Human aging is characterized by complex structural and functional decline, but quantifying its heterogeneity and assessing biological age remain challenges. We present the mCAS (multicentric Chinese aging standardized cohort) developed from 2,019 Chinese individuals aged 18-91 years. Integrating high-dimensional clinical, physiological, and molecular-level data, we constructed a three-tiered aging framework: the core capacity clock (CC-clock) to quantify clinical physiological decline, the...

CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest that even decline confined to a single physical performance domain may signal an early transition toward increased vulnerability. Monitoring trajectories of physical performance may therefore help identify older adults at increased mortality risk before more widespread functional deterioration becomes apparent.

Descendants of longevity-enriched sibships demonstrate a broad health and survival advantage throughout the life course. However, little is known about manifestations during very early life. Here we show a pattern of lower risk of adverse early-life outcomes in third-generation grandchildren (N = 5637) of Danish longevity-enriched sibships compared to the general population, including infant mortality (Hazard Ratio = 0.53, 95% CI [0.36, 0.77]) and a range of neonatal health indicators. These...

sc-ChromAging, a chromatin accessibility-based aging clock, was developed using single-cell ATAC-seq from 401 Chinese individuals. It identified CD4⁺ naive T cells as the most accurate predictors of age. This clock linked immune aging with pathways in inflammation, infection, and tumor susceptibility, and connecting chromatin changes to plasma metabolites like triacylglycerols.

Trehalase, the primary enzyme responsible for the degradation of gastrointestinal trehalose ("mushroom sugar"), is well-characterised in the human gut, but has not been conclusively identified in the human brain. Trehalose itself has shown promise in neuroprotection through diverse molecular mechanisms, including the autophagy-driven clearance of cellular debris and neurotoxic aggregates. However, the mechanisms activating trehalose and its integration into human central nervous system processes...

Inter-organ communication plays a critical role in mammalian aging and longevity control. Here, we identified Mimecan from transcriptomic comparisons between young and aged skeletal muscles. Skeletal muscle-derived Mimecan regulates core body temperature via brown adipose tissue (BAT), which is impaired in aged mice. Skeletal muscle-specific loss- and gain-of-function models demonstrate that Mimecan activates melanocortin 4 receptor (MC4R)-positive neurons in the dorsomedial hypothalamus (DMH)...

Garlic (Allium sativum L.) and its aged extract contain many bioactive compounds that can bring health benefits to humans. Among them, S-1-propenyl-L-cysteine (S1PC) has recently drawn significant attention in the field of nutriceutical research. However, the mechanism of its molecular action has remained poorly understood. Here, we show that S1PC significantly activates liver kinase B1 (LKB1) through enhancing its tertiary complex formation with STRAD and MO25, leading to stimulating the...

CONCLUSION: In old-old adults, we identified distinct gut microbiota signatures associated with sarcopenia. R. lactatiformans and P. faecium emerged as candidate features. The dietary-microbiota correlations suggest potential nutrition strategies. These findings provide a basis for exploring microbiota-based approaches in advanced aging.

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified APOE2 allele as linked to exceptional longevity, with carriers exhibiting a reduced risk of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Apolipoprotein E (APOE), a glycoprotein involved in lipid transport, has three major alleles. However, alterations in lipid metabolism alone do not fully explain APOE2's protective effects. In contrast, APOE4 is the strongest genetic risk factor for AD. To investigate how APOE2 promotes neuronal longevity and confers...

Despite recent advances, the fill factor (FF) of perovskite solar cells remains limited, largely owing to defect-related recombination. Paradoxically, most defect passivation approaches still depend on solvents, which deteriorate stability and pose challenges for large-scale fabrication. Here, we introduce a vapor-phase deposited from a liquid triethylammonium pentafluoropropionate (TEA-PFP) layer on top of perovskite. During deposition, TEA⁺ reacts with residual PbI(2) to generate a...

Relationships between the concentration of circulating IGFBP-7 and risk of disease and mortality have been suggested by small-scale investigations. In this prospective study, we investigated these relationships among 53,003 UK Biobank participants. Higher IGFBP-7 level was significantly associated with increased risk for liver cancer, all-cause mortality, diabetes, and other diseases. Associations were robust across sex and age groups and persisted over long follow-up. IGFBP-7 polygenic risk...

During an immune response, T cells face one of the most consequential decisions of their lifespan upon recognition of a ligand they have not previously encountered: whether to exit the naive basal state, undergo clonal expansion and acquire effector functions. This process is often portrayed as a binary switch, in which naive cells from a highly diverse repertoire transition from an 'off' state to an 'on' state. However, this digital view overlooks the crucial prior information that T cells...

Aging in the mammalian brain involves significant structural, functional, and metabolic changes, including a decrease in glutamate concentration. Glutamate-weighted chemical exchange saturation transfer (gluCEST) MRI provides a non-invasive method for mapping glutamate distribution with high spatial resolution. Collecting data from a large cohort of healthy mice aged 2 to 23 months, scanned in vivo at 17.2 T, we demonstrate that gluCEST can differentiate multiple brain regions, and introduce a...

CONCLUSION: Age-related differences in CMI were more prominent for gait than for memory tasks. Findings support that DT performance incrementally declines with age. Middle-aged and older adults had similar gait destabilization in different DT walking demands, but older adults had higher interference with DT walking of auditory processing demands. Retrieval tasks during walking expose early deficits in middle-aged adults that differentiate them from younger adults. Results further suggest...