Interdisciplinary Topics in Gerontology This is an RSS file. You can use it to subscribe to this data in your favourite RSS reader or to display this data on your own website or blog.

Aging. Facts and theories. Preface.
Authors: Robert L, Fulop T PMID: 24862023 [PubMed - in process] (Source: Interdisciplinary Topics in Gerontology)
Source: Interdisciplinary Topics in Gerontology - November 25, 2014 Category: Geriatrics Tags: Interdiscip Top Gerontol Source Type: research

Introduction to the theory of aging networks.
Authors: Witten TM Abstract This chapter will briefly address the history of systems biology and complexity theory and its use in understanding the dynamics of aging at the 'omic' level of biological organization. Using the idea of treating a biological organism like a network, we will examine how network mathematics, particularly graph theory, can provide deeper insight and can even predict potential genes and proteins that are related to the control of organismal life span. We will begin with a review of the history of network analysis at the cellular level and follow that by an introduction to the vario...
Source: Interdisciplinary Topics in Gerontology - November 25, 2014 Category: Geriatrics Tags: Interdiscip Top Gerontol Source Type: research

Applications to aging networks.
Authors: Wimble C, Witten TM Abstract This chapter will introduce a few additional network concepts, and then it will focus on the application of the material in the previous chapter to the study of systems biology of aging. In particular, we will examine how the material can be used to study aging networks in two sample species: Caenorhabditis elegans and Saccharomyces cerevisiae. © 2015 S. Karger AG, Basel. PMID: 25341510 [PubMed - in process] (Source: Interdisciplinary Topics in Gerontology)
Source: Interdisciplinary Topics in Gerontology - November 25, 2014 Category: Geriatrics Tags: Interdiscip Top Gerontol Source Type: research

Computational systems biology for aging research.
Authors: Mc Auley MT, Mooney KM Abstract Computational modelling is a key component of systems biology and integrates with the other techniques discussed thus far in this book by utilizing a myriad of data that are being generated to quantitatively represent and simulate biological systems. This chapter will describe what computational modelling involves; the rationale for using it, and the appropriateness of modelling for investigating the aging process. How a model is assembled and the different theoretical frameworks that can be used to build a model are also discussed. In addition, the chapter will des...
Source: Interdisciplinary Topics in Gerontology - November 25, 2014 Category: Geriatrics Tags: Interdiscip Top Gerontol Source Type: research

How does the body know how old it is? Introducing the epigenetic clock hypothesis.
Authors: Mitteldorf J Abstract Animals and plants have biological clocks that help to regulate circadian cycles, seasonal rhythms, growth, development and sexual maturity. If aging is not a stochastic process of attrition but is centrally orchestrated, it is reasonable to suspect that the timing of senescence is also influenced by one or more biological clocks. Evolutionary reasoning first articulated by G. Williams suggests that multiple, redundant clocks might influence organismal aging. Some aging clocks that have been proposed include the suprachiasmatic nucleus, the hypothalamus, involution of the thy...
Source: Interdisciplinary Topics in Gerontology - November 25, 2014 Category: Geriatrics Tags: Interdiscip Top Gerontol Source Type: research

The great evolutionary divide: two genomic systems biologies of aging.
Authors: Rose MR, Cabral LG, Philips MA, Rutledge GA, Phung KH, Mueller LD, Greer LF Abstract There is not one systems biology of aging, but two. Though aging can evolve in either sexual or asexual species when there is asymmetric reproduction, the evolutionary genetics of aging in species with frequent sexual recombination are quite different from those arising when sex is rare or absent. When recombination is rare, selection is expected to act chiefly on rare large-effect mutations, which purge genetic variation due to genome-wide hitchhiking. In such species, the systems biology of aging can focus on th...
Source: Interdisciplinary Topics in Gerontology - November 25, 2014 Category: Geriatrics Tags: Interdiscip Top Gerontol Source Type: research

Development and aging: two opposite but complementary phenomena.
Authors: Feltes BC, de Faria Poloni J, Bonatto D Abstract Aging is a consequence of an organism's evolution, where specific traits that lead to the organism's development eventually promote aged phenotypes or could lead to age-related diseases. In this sense, one theory that broadly explored development and its association to aging is the developmental aging theory (DevAge), which also encompasses most known age-associated theories. Thus, we employed different systems biology tools to prospect developmental and aging-associated networks for human and murine models for evolutionary comparison. The gathered ...
Source: Interdisciplinary Topics in Gerontology - November 25, 2014 Category: Geriatrics Tags: Interdiscip Top Gerontol Source Type: research

Aging as a process of deficit accumulation: its utility and origin.
Authors: Mitnitski A, Rockwood K Abstract Individuals of the same age differ greatly with respect to their health status and life span. We have suggested that the health status of individuals can be represented by the number of health deficits that they accumulate during their life. We have suggested that this can be measured by a fitness-frailty index (or just a frailty index), which is the ratio of the deficits present in a person to the total number of deficits considered (e.g. available in a given database or experimental procedure). Further, we have proposed that the frailty index represents the biolo...
Source: Interdisciplinary Topics in Gerontology - November 25, 2014 Category: Geriatrics Tags: Interdiscip Top Gerontol Source Type: research

Low-grade systemic inflammation connects aging, metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular disease.
Authors: Guarner V, Rubio-Ruiz ME Abstract Aging is associated with immunosenescence and accompanied by a chronic inflammatory state which contributes to metabolic syndrome, diabetes and their cardiovascular consequences. Risk factors for cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) and diabetes overlap, leading to the hypothesis that both share an inflammatory basis. Obesity is increased in the elderly population, and adipose tissue induces a state of systemic inflammation partially induced by adipokines. The liver plays a pivotal role in the metabolism of nutrients and exhibits alterations in the expression of genes a...
Source: Interdisciplinary Topics in Gerontology - November 25, 2014 Category: Geriatrics Tags: Interdiscip Top Gerontol Source Type: research

Modulating mTOR in Aging and Health.
Authors: Johnson SC, Sangesland M, Kaeberlein M, Rabinovitch PS Abstract The physiological responses to nutrient availability play a central role in aging and disease. Genetic and pharmacological studies have identified highly conserved cellular signaling pathways that influence aging by regulating the interface between nutrient and hormone cues and cellular growth and maintenance. Among these pathways, the mechanistic target of rapamycin (mTOR) has been most reproducibly shown to modulate aging in evolutionarily diverse organisms as reduction in mTOR activity extends life span from yeast to rodents. mTOR ...
Source: Interdisciplinary Topics in Gerontology - November 25, 2014 Category: Geriatrics Tags: Interdiscip Top Gerontol Source Type: research

Melatonin and circadian oscillators in aging - a dynamic approach to the multiply connected players.
Authors: Hardeland R Abstract From the perspective of systems biology, melatonin is relevant to aging in multiple ways. As a highly pleiotropic agent, it acts as a modulator and protectant of mitochondrial electron flux, a potent antioxidant that supports the redox balance and prevents excessive free radical formation, a coregulator of metabolic sensing and antagonist of insulin resistance, an immune modulator, a physiological hypnotic and, importantly, an orchestrating chronobiotic. It entrains central and peripheral circadian clocks and is required for some high-amplitude rhythms. The circadian system, w...
Source: Interdisciplinary Topics in Gerontology - November 25, 2014 Category: Geriatrics Tags: Interdiscip Top Gerontol Source Type: research

Diet-microbiota-health interactions in older subjects: implications for healthy aging.
Authors: Lynch DB, Jeffery IB, Cusack S, O'Connor EM, O'Toole PW Abstract With modern medicine and an awareness of healthy lifestyle practices, people are living longer and generally healthier lives than their ancestors. These successes of modern medicine have resulted in an increasing proportion of elderly in society. Research groups around the world have investigated the contribution of gut microbial communities to human health and well-being. It was established that the microbiota composition of the human gut is modulated by lifestyle factors, especially diet. The microbiota composition and function, ac...
Source: Interdisciplinary Topics in Gerontology - November 25, 2014 Category: Geriatrics Tags: Interdiscip Top Gerontol Source Type: research

Systems biology approaches in aging research.
Authors: Chauhan A, Liebal UW, Vera J, Baltrusch S, Junghanß C, Tiedge M, Fuellen G, Wolkenhauer O, Köhling R Abstract Aging is a systemic process which progressively manifests itself at multiple levels of structural and functional organization from molecular reactions and cell-cell interactions in tissues to the physiology of an entire organ. There is ever increasing data on biomedical relevant network interactions for the aging process at different scales of time and space. To connect the aging process at different structural, temporal and spatial scales, extensive systems biological approaches need to...
Source: Interdisciplinary Topics in Gerontology - November 25, 2014 Category: Geriatrics Tags: Interdiscip Top Gerontol Source Type: research

Conservative Growth Hormone/IGF-1 and mTOR Signaling Pathways as a Target for Aging and Cancer Prevention: Do We Really Have an Antiaging Drug?
Authors: Anisimov VN Abstract Inactivation of the GH/insulin/IGF-1 signaling molecules corresponding genes as well as the inactivation of serine/threonine protein kinase mTOR increases life span in nematodes, fruit flies and mice. Evidence has emerged that antidiabetic biguanides and rapamycin are promising candidates for pharmacological interventions leading to both life span extension and prevention of cancer. The available data on the relationship of two fundamental processes - aging and carcinogenesis - have been suggested to be a basis for understanding these two-side effects of biguanides and rapamyc...
Source: Interdisciplinary Topics in Gerontology - November 25, 2014 Category: Geriatrics Tags: Interdiscip Top Gerontol Source Type: research

Author index.
Authors: PMID: 25341522 [PubMed - in process] (Source: Interdisciplinary Topics in Gerontology)
Source: Interdisciplinary Topics in Gerontology - November 25, 2014 Category: Geriatrics Tags: Interdiscip Top Gerontol Source Type: research