The Genetic Control of Aging

During the last few decades, scientists have begun to solve one of the greatest puzzles of all time: Why do we age? It turns out that aging, like so much else in biology, is subject to regulation by the genes; in this case, by genes encoding familiar signaling proteins and transcription factors. Changing these genes can extend lifespan dramatically in animals, and their different allelic forms may influence human longevity too. This lecture will describe the nature of these evolutionarily-conserved pathways, and their regulation by environmental and physiological cues, particularly in the nematode C. elegans.