What Is Aging?

 Aging  

Why do we grow old? Integrative Biologist João Pedro de Magalhães explains what aging is and how we can extend our lifespan.

I Body Why do we grow old? Integrative Biologist João Pedro de Magalhãeexplains what aging is and how we can extend our lifespan.

Aging has a profound impact on human society and modern medicine, yet it remains a major puzzle of biology. The goal of de Magalhães' work is to help understand the genetic, cellular, and molecular mechanisms of ageing.

"In the long term, I would like my work to help ameliorate age-related diseases and preserve health. No other biomedical field has so much potential to improve human health as research on the basic mechanisms of ageing," he states.

Fascinated by the genome and by the opportunities its sequencing opened, de Magalhães then did a postdoc with genomics pioneer George Church at Harvard Medical School in Boston. There, he helped developed high-throughput approaches for studying ageing, including computational tools and databases, statistical models of mortality, and comparative genomics methods for investigating the evolution of longevity.

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"If you could slow down the process of aging by just seven years, this would reduce in half the incidences of age-related diseases at every single age," says de Magalhães.  "This would have a massive impact on human lifespan, and on human health."

The video was animated by Jorge Cham and produced by Piled Higher and Deeper in partnership with The Integrative Genomics of Ageing Group at The University of Liverpool. Funding provided by The University of Liverpool.

A more in depth lecture on João Pedro de Magalhães on recent advances on the biology and genetics of aging, including state-of-the-art genome-wide approaches, caloric restriction mimetics and systems biology methods employed by his lab is featured below.

SOURCE  Piled Higher and Deeper

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