Aging & Longevity

Life is a constant struggle against disorder. As we age, our ability to maintain internal order declines. In the healthy human brain, order is observable in the form of functionally segregated brain network communities that exhibit spatial consistency. These communities associate with distinct cognitive and physical functions. When mapped into the brain, they form a functional "landscape". We assessed the spatial disorder of these landscapes in older adults with a wide range of mobility using a...

Phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K) integrates insulin/IGF signaling (IIS) and Ras inputs to control lifespan, metabolism and growth. Yet the organismal consequences of selective structural perturbations remain poorly understood. Using structure-guided CRISPR/Cas9-dependent genome editing, we dissected functions of AGE-1, the sole Class IA PI3K catalytic subunit in Caenorhabditis elegans. An endogenously tagged AGE-1, containing a long flexible linker, epitope and fluorescent tag, retained full...

Reducing protein synthesis extends lifespan across taxa, but pharmacological strategies to safely attenuate translation remain limited. Tetracyclines are clinically used antibiotics long observed to exert beneficial effects in age-associated diseases and extend lifespan in model organisms, though the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. Here, we systematically profiled commercially available tetracyclines and show that translation attenuation is a general property of the tetracycline class....

Deterioration of the blood-brain barrier (BBB), including impaired neurovascular uncoupling, contributes to cognitive decline in aging. The BBB is formed principally by brain microvascular endothelial cells (ECs), and ECs throughout the body are enriched for the transcription factor Krüppel-like factor 4 (KLF4). Because KLF4 levels in ECs decrease with age, we tested whether that decline contributes to aging-related BBB deterioration, neurovascular dysfunction, and cognitive impairment. Using...

Age and early life adversity (ELA) are key determinants of health, but whether they affect similar physiological mechanisms across tissues is unknown. We generated DNA methylation (DNAm) profiles across 14 tissues in 237 semi-free-ranging rhesus macaques with naturally occurring ELA. Age-associated DNAm was predominantly tissue dependent, yet tissue-specific epigenetic clocks showed that epigenetic aging was relatively consistent within individuals. ELA effects were adversity dependent, but each...

Cognitive decline is a major challenge in aging. Transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) modulates neural oscillations, potentially aiding cognition. Due to variation in late-life tACS studies, we conducted the first meta-analysis in older adults (≥ 60 years) to estimate pooled cognitive effects and determine if protocol parameters explain outcome variability. We searched Medline/PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library, and ClinicalTrials.gov (up to September 17, 2025) for studies examining...

CONCLUSIONS: These findings emphasize the importance of sex-specific nutritional interventions and stable food supply systems for preventing frailty in aging populations.

Metformin use may be associated with reduced risk of all-cause mortality as well as prevent the onset of diseases of aging, namely cardiovascular diseases (CVD), cancer, and dementia. We systematically reviewed recent studies to determine whether metformin can promote healthspan in people with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). A comprehensive literature search was conducted using Medline, Embase, and Scopus for randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and cohort studies evaluating the effect of...

Aging-related declines in spatial navigation pose significant challenges for older adults' independence and quality of life. Among navigational deficits, older adults have been shown to demonstrate deficits in utilizing allocentric (i.e., world-centered) information and rely on egocentric (i.e., body-centered) cues during navigation, resulting in reference frame bias. We investigated naturalistic navigation performance and allocentric knowledge formation in younger adults (N = 30) and older...

INTRODUCTION: Healthy aging is often accompanied by a loss of hearing sensitivity and a reduced ability to understand speech in both quiet and noisy environments. From a physiological perspective, neural oscillations are thought to fundamentally contribute to parse the speech signal into meaningful units and to extract linguistically relevant information at multiple hierarchical levels. Given that syllables are essential structural elements of the speech signal that recur with quasi-rhythmic...

CONCLUSION: These findings indicate that amyloidosis is associated with reduced reliability of spatial memory performance and impaired handling of competing spatial information, particularly under conditions requiring flexible updating of overlapping mnemonic representations. The results further suggest increased vulnerability to interference-related spatial memory deficits with age. Together, these findings support the utility of the OUL paradigm for studying memory updating impairments in...

Substantial heterogeneity in cognitive ageing is well documented. Such heterogeneity has been attributed to individual differences in brain maintenance - i.e., the relative preservation of neural resources in ageing. However, large-scale longitudinal evidence is currently lacking. In this study, we pooled data from three longitudinal population-based Swedish cohorts (total N = 1 356, 60-93 years at baseline, maximum follow-up duration: 7 years) to assess whether global brain maintenance is...

Hutchinson-Gilford progeria syndrome (HGPS) is an ultra-rare premature aging disorder caused predominantly by a de novo LMNA c.1824C>T mutation that produces progerin, a truncated and permanently farnesylated lamin A isoform. Progerin accumulation disrupts nuclear lamina integrity and chromatin organization, inducing persistent DNA damage responses, telomere attrition, mitochondrial dysfunction, and cellular senescence. These processes drive a multisystem clinical phenotype characterized by...

Therapy-induced senescence (TIS) in cancer cells can be triggered by radiotherapy, chemotherapy, and certain targeted therapeutics. Here, we demonstrate that a new form of TIS, termed fatty acid synthesis therapy-induced senescence (FASTIS), can be induced by pharmacologically targeting de novo lipogenesis. Cancer cells can evade the anti-proliferative effects of clinically relevant inhibitors of core lipogenic enzymes, such as acetyl-CoA carboxylase (ACC) and fatty acid synthase (FASN), by...

G-quadruplexes (G4s) are four-stranded nucleic acid structures that regulate virtually all nucleic acid-dependent cellular processes. At present, most functional studies involving G4s have focused on cancer cells. This study investigated how neurons respond to genotoxic stress induced by quarfloxin (CX-3543), a small molecule that stabilizes G4s. We found that quarfloxin treatment induced DNA damage in neurons, with double-strand breaks enriched in the nucleolus. Proteomic analysis revealed that...

Although senolytics such as dasatinib and quercetin (D+Q) show promise in modulating aging, their tissue-specific efficacy and optimal intervention timing remain poorly understood. Given D+Q's potential off-target effects, incomplete senescent cell clearance and associated hematologic side effects, we performed an unbiased multitissue single-cell analysis in aged mice across different aging phenotypes and tissue contexts. Here through integrative transcriptomics, single-cell technologies,...

Throughout the female reproductive lifespan, the ovary undergoes hundreds of cycles of follicle development, ovulation and tissue regeneration. How aging disrupts the coordination of such precise, multicellular interactions across time and space is not well understood. Using Slide-seq, a near-cellular spatial transcriptomics method, here we profile 22 mouse ovaries across the reproductive cycle and chronological ages, capturing 610,620 spots across 69 spatial profiles. We develop a novel...

Formation in lithium-ion battery manufacturing typically involves low-rate charge-discharge cycles to establish stable electrode-electrolyte interfaces-a time-consuming process^(1-4). Here, our findings on lithium-rich layered oxide cathodes challenge the necessity of conventional formation, which can even shorten battery lifespan. Fast formation, on the other hand, reduces production cost and enhances capacity and stability. Multiscale synchrotron-based techniques show that residual lithium...

The etiology of Alzheimer's disease (AD) remains unclear but is likely driven by gene-environment interactions. We present a multi-organ untargeted metabolomics atlas (n = 2,271) paired with metagenomics data (n = 666) from two AD transgenic mouse models (3xTg and 5xFAD) under colonized and germ-free conditions. Systems-level analyses revealed clusters of dysregulated molecules across tissues, including carnitines, bile acids, B vitamins, neurotransmitters, and N-acyl lipids. Metabolic shifts...

The human heart undergoes continuous transcriptional remodeling from development through aging, yet the cellular and regulatory features governing this process remain incompletely defined. Here, we generated a single-nucleus RNA sequencing atlas of 442,239 nuclei from 54 nonfailing myocardial tissues of 29 individuals spanning development, adulthood, and aging, covering left and right ventricles. Across all major cell types, we uncovered coordinated yet cell type-specific transcriptional...