Aging in Single-celled Organisms: from Bacteria to the Whole Tree of Life/SabrinaSpencer

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Notes by user Sabrina Spencer (CU Boulder) for Aging in Single-celled Organisms: from Bacteria to the Whole Tree of Life

Post-meeting Reflection

1+ paragraphs on any combination of the following:

• Presentation highlights
• Open questions that came up
• How your perspective changed
• Impact on your own work
• e.g. the discussion on [A] that we are having reminds me of [B] conference/[C] initiative/[D] funding call-for-proposal/[E] research group

What is holding back the field of aging? First is a definition of aging, which we have generally agreed represents deterioration of function. Second then, is how to measure deterioration of function. We lack good markers for most relevant items at the single-cell level: 1. Cumulative DNA damage, 2. Telomere length, 3. Oxygen consumption rate, 4. Presence of original or newly replicated DNA strand. 5. epigenetic clock measured by DNA methylation.

Of course, there are single-cell DNA damage markers, but as far as I know, they only mark current existing mismatches, damaged bases, single-strand or double-strand breaks etc, but not cumulative damage. Telomere length and oxygen consumption rate are easily measured on a population level, but not in single cells. Tracking the immortal strand is technically difficult. For the epigenetic clock measured by DNA methylation, the conceptual link with deterioration of function is unclear.

Then there's the ability to return to homeostasis as a general definition of aging, but how to measure that is completely unclear to me.

The one thing that can be measured in single cells both in a snapshot and over time is protein aggregation. Lin Chao measures this with IBPA-GFP. Maybe measuring protein aggregates are best bet since that is measurable and since it has been shown to cause dysfunction, particularly in neurons

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Reference material notes

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• Here is [A] database on [B] that I pull data from to do [C] analysis that might be of interest to this group (insert link).
• Here is a free tool for calculating [ABC] (insert link)
• This painting/sculpture/forms of artwork is emblematic to our discussion on [X]!
• Schwartz et al. 2017 offers a review on [ABC] migration as relate to climatic factors (add the reference as well).

Baker DJ, Childs BG, Durik M, Wijers ME, Sieben CJ, Zhong J, Saltness RA, Jeganathan KB, Verzosa GC, Pezeshki A, Khazaie K, Miller JD, van Deursen JM. Naturally occurring p16(Ink4a)-positive cells shorten healthy lifespan. Nature. 2016 Feb 11; 530 (7589):184-9 Epub 2016 Feb 03

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=26840489&query_hl=11&itool=pubmed_docsum

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