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\u201cWe\u2019re trying to understand how old cells are in different organs and the biological processes that occur as they go through their normal lifetime.<\/p>\nA recent \u201cLab-to-Table Conversation\u201d sponsored by School of Medicine Basic Sciences featured three Vanderbilt faculty members who discussed aging research and the latest findings from their groups. Here, we share their responses to the question, \u201cWhat are you most excited about in your own research program?\u201d (Responses edited for length and clarity.)<\/p>\n
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\u201cWe\u2019re trying to understand how old cells are in different organs and the biological processes that occur as they go through their normal lifetime.<\/p>\n
We\u2019re beginning to understand how dietary interventions affect cell age. We know that caloric restriction in most animal models tends to extend the average life span of an animal. And the initial data that we have is that caloric restriction tends to prolong cellular lifetime \u2014 the cells tend to be longer lived. We think that the dietary interventions are signaling to cells not to focus on proliferation, but instead to focus on becoming better cells, changing the way they metabolize certain nutrients to achieve proper homeostasis.<\/p>\n
We are also finding that caloric restriction tends to prolong the lifetime of cells throughout the body, at least in different organs that we looked at. I\u2019m excited about dietary interventions that might actually trigger cells to be more resilient and potentially live longer.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u201cWe\u2019re working on nutrient-sensing pathways, diet and cell biology, and the way that these processes interact with aging. We\u2019re trying to unlock the reprogramming events that occur during pro-longevity interventions involving dietary restriction, when nutrient levels are low, so that we can develop small molecule therapeutics that do similar things.<\/p>\n
One of the things that we know from worms all the way up to humans is that the inner structure of a cell and all its organelles are very dynamic. They change shape; they move around throughout the cell; and they even interact with each other in ways that are really important for how the cell as a whole functions.<\/p>\n
We find that the dynamics of these organelle networks and their communication with each other are breaking down during the aging process. At the same time, we know that exposing cells or animals to scarce nutrient conditions such as when we are fasting, also dramatically reshapes the cell in ways that we predict are improving the quality of aging. So, we\u2019re excited to probe how we can preserve these subcellular organelle structures and interactions as a mechanism of improving health during the aging process.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u201cNeurons and other long-lived cells rely on a process called autophagy (regulator of proteostasis and mitochondrial function) that recycles cell components, to conserve energy and to prevent buildup of toxic, damaged materials.<\/p>\n
We\u2019re excited because we\u2019ve made a link between chronic low-grade inflammation, which happens in aging and in a lot of disease processes, and impaired autophagy in the brains of normal aging mice.<\/p>\n
By doing a long-term anti-inflammatory treatment, we were able to improve autophagy and clearance of proteins. We think that\u2019s important to preserve the health of neurons directly. It also preserved neurons near accumulated debris fields \u2014 extruded material that wasn\u2019t degraded and that we think sets up a feed-forward inflammatory cycle that causes more damage to the brain and neuronal connections.<\/p>\n
Since we don\u2019t really replace neurons to any great extent, we\u2019ve got to do everything we can to help them stay healthy, so we think this decrease in inflammation and improved autophagy could have big implications for CNS aging. We are also developing PET imaging tools to try to see this set of processes in model organisms and people.\u201d<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A recent \u201cLab-to-Table Conversation\u201d sponsored by School of Medicine Basic Sciences featured three Vanderbilt faculty members who discussed aging research and the latest findings from their groups. Here, we share their responses to the question, \u201cWhat are you most excited about in your own research program?\u201d (Responses edited for length and clarity.) Rafael…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":219,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[20,44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-vm-related-content","category-vm-spring-2022"],"acf":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcDnub-T3","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/219"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3413"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3413\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3419,"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3413\/revisions\/3419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}