My research about ageing: the notebook

[Jose_Aging]

I open this thread with the intention of sharing part of my work and observations with the users of physicsforums. My name is Jose and I've spent thousands of hours trying to understand why we age.
I know, it's a complex mechanism and it needs a lot of work to start seeing some results.

I started about 7 years ago and I keep reading and thinking all my free time. It's my big "hobby".
I work in the health profession, not as researcher but in other field.

I hope all of you enjoy this and we would share our opinions.

 

[Ygggdrasil]

Welcome to PF, Jose. Aging is definitely a very complicated problem in the biomedical sciences, and it is definitely a very active area of research. The journal Cell published a pretty nice review article last year that gives a fairly comprehensive view of the current state of research into aging, and is probably a good starting point for those interested in learning more about the biological mechanisms underlying aging.

Here's the abstract of the review article. The citation is below:

Aging is characterized by a progressive loss of physiological integrity, leading to impaired function and increased vulnerability to death. This deterioration is the primary risk factor for major human pathologies, including cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disorders, and neurodegenerative diseases. Aging research has experienced an unprecedented advance over recent years, particularly with the discovery that the rate of aging is controlled, at least to some extent, by genetic pathways and biochemical processes conserved in evolution. This Review enumerates nine tentative hallmarks that represent common denominators of aging in different organisms, with special emphasis on mammalian aging. These hallmarks are: genomic instability, telomere attrition, epigenetic alterations, loss of proteostasis, deregulated nutrient sensing, mitochondrial dysfunction, cellular senescence, stem cell exhaustion, and altered intercellular communication. A major challenge is to dissect the interconnectedness between the candidate hallmarks and their relative contributions to aging, with the final goal of identifying pharmaceutical targets to improve human health during aging, with minimal side effects.

López-Otín et al. 2013. The Hallmarks of Aging. Cell 153: 1194. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2013.05.039