Cells & DNA

Aging does not have a single cause. But one mechanism sits at the top: changes in how genes are switched on and off.

Aging is not evenly distributed across the body. Even in blood vessels, a tissue everyone has, the process unfolds differently…

Urolithin A is a compound produced by gut bacteria from foods like pomegranate. It is already known as a supplement for…

Why does female fertility decline so much faster than the rest of the body ages?

Scientists use aging clocks to measure whether a therapy lowers biological age. But new analysis shows that a single positive…

Everyone knows RNA is useful for cells. But having too much of it is an unexpected finding.

A rodent that doesn’t age like other animals, barely gets cancer and stays fertile for decades.

Cells constantly break down and recycle their own damaged components. This internal cleanup keeps them functional.

The immune system is involved in Alzheimer’s disease, but studying how that works in human brain tissue is difficult.

Who is funding ageing research, where are the first treatments reaching patients, and what does Europe get out of it? Five…

The lining of blood vessels consists of cells that age particularly fast. When these cells become senescent, they secrete…

The oldest known land animal with a confirmed age is a giant tortoise aged 194 years. Scientists have now sequenced its genome…

As the brain ages, key connections between nerve cells start to malfunction. Researchers have now identified an enzyme that…

Supplements that boost NAD+ are widely popular in longevity circles. But most people taking them have no way of knowing…

Every human cell contains ancient stretches of DNA that originated from viruses. In youth, they are kept silent.

Bones don’t weaken with age by accident. Inside bone marrow, stem cells that normally build new bone start producing fat cells…

Blood vessels age through the same mechanisms as the rest of the body, but the consequences are outsized: atherosclerosis…

Senescent cells were long considered a curious laboratory footnote. Today they are central to the science of healthy aging.…

Muscle loss in later life is one of the most underestimated health problems. It increases the risk of falls, reduces…

What if you could roll back the biological age of a cell without erasing its identity? That may sound far-fetched, but…

Why does a particular gene raise Alzheimer’s risk so strongly? Researchers found a clue in chemical markings on DNA, and it…

After a stroke, many patients are left with lasting memory and movement problems. Researchers tested an approach in mice that…

Rheumatoid arthritis begins long before the first symptoms appear. Scientists are now looking at what changes in the blood…

Back pain in later life often has a deeper cause than wear and tear alone. Researchers discovered that a little-known gene…

Stem cells meant to repair gum tissue sometimes age so rapidly in the lab that they stop working.

The heart has almost no ability to repair itself after damage. New research in mice identifies a protein that appears to…

Cardiolipin is a fat molecule essential to the energy-generating structures inside muscle cells.

Regular exposure to red light can reduce signs of cell aging. That may sound like pseudoscience, but a new study in mice…

Not all aged cells are the same. A new study shows that the reason a cell stops dividing determines which signaling molecules…

Cancer survivors age faster at the cellular level. New data from a randomised trial suggest that regular exercise slows that…

Which measurement of your body best predicts how long you will live?

Large dogs live shorter lives than small dogs. Dog owners have known this for decades. But why? New research uncovers a…

Mitochondria, the energy-producing organelles in your cells, regularly merge together. Until now, the precise mechanism was…

Everyone ages, but no one ages the same way. New research shows how strongly individual aging patterns diverge, even among…

There is a protein in your cells that constantly monitors energy levels. Activate it directly, and lab animals live longer.…

The DNA inside a cell is not always equally tightly or loosely packed.

You can tell how biologically old someone is by looking inside a blood stem cell.

People with osteoporosis have a strikingly elevated risk of dementia. And people with dementia more often lose bone density.…

The protein p53 is best known for suppressing tumors. But what happens when it is lost in healthy tissue?

An existing antimicrobial compound has an unexpected effect: it improves the energy factories inside immune cells. In worms,…

Senescent cells accumulate as we age. That much is known. But why the immune system becomes progressively worse at clearing…

Men and women age differently. That has long been known, but the biological reason remained unclear.

Not all APOE genes are equal. People carrying the APOE2 variant appear to have a lower risk of Alzheimer’s disease than those…

Drugs that clear out aged cells work well in mice, but extend their lives less than calorie restriction does. Why? Because…

Aging muscles do not only grow weaker: they also change their type. New research points to a fat molecule inside mitochondria…

Fat tissue contains cells that can produce heat instead of storing energy. A newly identified protein turns that switch on,…

Stem cell therapies are now widely available, but they work differently than originally assumed. Transplanted cells rarely…

The body has an internal clock that governs almost every cell.

A young heart placed in an old body becomes molecularly older. An old heart placed in a young body becomes molecularly younger.

Why does learning become harder as we age? New research points to mitochondria, the energy-producing structures inside cells.

The Earth’s magnetic field is so unremarkable that nobody thinks about it. But shield fruit flies with a Parkinson’s-like…

What if you could replace damaged energy units in cells with healthy ones, delivered by injection? That is the idea behind…

What if a doctor could shine a beam of light on your tissue and count how many senescent cells it contains, without taking a…

A compound your body makes after eating pomegranates, walnuts and certain berries improved heart function by up to 80 percent…

Your cells have an alarm system for DNA damage. But what if that alarm keeps firing even when there’s no real emergency?

Aging cells release harmful substances that drive inflammation and damage tissue. Until now, there was no reliable way to…

Immune cells delivered via bone marrow transplantation do more than restore the body’s defenses. They also transfer their own…

A small amount of cellular damage in your energy-producing organelles can extend lifespan. That sounds counterintuitive, but…

Naked mole rats are remarkably long-lived for their size. One reason may be a special form of hyaluronan in their connective…

Some organisms on Earth live for more than 250 years. What do they have in common?

Scientists gave magnet-producing bacteria to microscopic worms. The worms lived on average 43% longer. The mechanism involves…

Poor sleep or a disrupted day-night cycle accelerates aging at the cellular level.

Tumors have a strategy to keep the immune system out: they surround themselves with senescent cells that block immune access.

Scientists have mapped for the first time how individual kidney cells age, in both humans and mice.

Two major causes of aging have long been studied separately: cells that permanently shut down, and cells that accumulate…

Sun-induced skin aging can be partially reversed. Researchers showed that molecules secreted by stem cells reduced aging…

When tissue is damaged, some cells accelerate repair in a way nobody expected. They merge into large multi-nucleated giants.…

Your body has a sensor designed to detect viruses. But in certain genetic conditions, that sensor misfires on your own DNA.…

Senescent cells look nearly identical to healthy ones from the outside. But inside, they have changed fundamentally. A new…

The immune system normally clears away damaged and aged cells. But senescent cells in old tissue often linger, even when the…

Senescent cells are usually identified by changes in which genes are active. But there is much more going on: the chemical…

What you eat and how you live has a measurable effect on DNA protection. Find out which choices actually work – and where…

A protein in the brain declines with age. In mice, lower levels are linked to more inflammation, weaker bones, thinner skin,…

Skin does not age solely because of the sun or smoking. Deep inside skin cells, a protein that normally prevents damage…

Heart cells do not work in perfect synchrony. They compete with each other in a constant tug-of-war.

A bacterium that causes pneumonia and sexually transmitted infections does something unexpected. It sabotages the way host…

Some animal species appear not to age. The hydra, a tiny freshwater organism, is one of them.

When retinal cells die in mammals, they are gone for good. That makes vision loss from retinal damage nearly irreversible.

The thymus is the organ where immune cells mature. After your thirties, it shrinks substantially, weakening adaptive immunity.

Age-related muscle loss is usually blamed on inactivity or poor diet.

Reducing calorie intake by 30% doesn’t just affect weight. It also appears to slow the pace at which errors accumulate in the…

Wrinkles and reduced skin elasticity are not just cosmetic. They are the visible outcome of years of cellular damage driven by…

Hundreds of tiny proteins active in the brain’s outer layer have been systematically mapped for the first time in people with…

Platinum-based chemotherapy causes liver damage that goes beyond ordinary side effects. It accelerates the biological aging of…

A protein that barely appears in the scientific literature turns out to play a direct role in cellular aging.

As kidneys age, senescent immune cells accumulate and damage tissue. Blocking a single protein on the surface of those cells…

Two people with identical genes and a similar lifestyle can age in completely different ways at the molecular level.

Scientists want to know whether an intervention genuinely slows aging. But the measurement tools they use give different…

Older people find it harder to unlearn old habits and adopt new ones. The same is true for mice.

Inflammation is generally seen as protection. But in cancer, it can flip into its opposite. New research shows how a chronic…

Stem cells maintain themselves through a tightly controlled network of signals.

Hundreds of tiny proteins in the brain have been overlooked by scientists for years. A new atlas maps more than a thousand of…

Muscles get weaker with age. That much is well known. But a new study identifies a specific molecular culprit: a signaling…

Senescent cells accumulate in the body over time and fuel chronic inflammation. Researchers have now found a new way to…

Epigenetic clocks, saliva tests, blood chemistry: which measure of your biological age is reliable, what can your doctor offer…

Eat well, exercise, manage stress. We know the advice. But what if some diseases of old age are unavoidable no matter how well…

A gene long linked to Alzheimer’s disease does something else too: it destabilises how DNA is packaged inside cells,…

What if tiny packages from young blood could be modified to reach the brain more effectively?

What if switching off a single hormonal signal in middle age could add years to your life? Researchers did exactly that in mice.

What if you could replace damaged brain cells with new ones, made from cells already present in the brain?

Kidney cells that cannot process insulin properly lose more than their metabolism. They also lose the ability to read genes…

The brain’s own immune cells can become damaged with age. When they do, they release a protein that disrupts surrounding brain…

Not all parts of the brain decline at the same rate in Lewy body dementia.

Every cell needs ribosomes to make proteins. But under stress, those ribosomes enter a kind of sleep mode.

Senescent cells accumulate as we age. They contribute to inflammation and tissue damage. Now researchers have drawn up a joint…

A common but poorly addressed side effect of chemotherapy is lasting nerve damage in the hands and feet.

The immune cells that protect your brain can grow old and start secreting something harmful to their neighbours. A newly…

A single molecular switch in the immune system may help drive aging throughout the body.

When proteins are built with the wrong components, cells usually suffer for it. Yet female fruit flies with exactly that kind…

Millions of people have a fatty liver without knowing it. When that fatty liver tips into dangerous inflammation, the trigger…

Our own DNA can damage itself. Segments of genetic code copy themselves and insert elsewhere in the genome. With age, the body…

Aged cells in the brain behave like a slow infection. They send out signals that push neighboring cells into the same aging state.

Why does female fertility decline with age? A new study points to a specific inflammatory process deep inside the ovary. And…

An enzyme borrowed from bacteria makes the energy factories inside cells run more cleanly. In worms and mice, this reduced…

Ovaries age faster than most organs, but the reason has remained unclear.

Glaucoma is the leading cause of irreversible blindness worldwide.

Senescent cells, cells that stop dividing but refuse to die, accumulate in the brain as we age.

There are still no approved drugs for sarcopenia, the age-related loss of muscle mass and strength. A new analysis suggests a…

As we age, the protein-and-fibre network surrounding our cells becomes stiffer. New research suggests that stiffness alone is…

A protein that protects cells from their own DNA turns out, when lost, to cause inflammation and accelerated aging.

Not every cell ages at the same time. Researchers found that aging in the body follows a fixed sequence of phases, with…

What if you could slow aging by placing a small piece of muscle tissue under the skin? Researchers did exactly that in mice…

Our immune system has its own category of cells that can directly clear out senescent cells. But the same cells also play a…

Our body has a system that detects and attacks unwanted pieces of DNA inside the cell nucleus.

From retatrutide to NMN, from metformin to electrolyte powders: a rundown of the best-known Ozempic alternatives and what the…

A class of drugs already used in breast cancer treatment may also act on a core mechanism of biological aging. Not by…

Senescent brain cells do not stay quiet. They emit chemical signals that push neighbouring cells into the same dysfunctional…

Senescent cells keep the body in a state of chronic inflammation. New research shows that a protein normally involved in cell…

There is not one single way to live longer. New genetic research in small roundworms shows that at least three different…

Mitochondria do more than generate energy. They also produce a peptide that directly attacks bacteria and reprograms immune…

Microglia, the brain’s immune cells, change their behavior as you age. New research explains how shifts in their metabolism…

Fat cells that have become senescent release a protein that circulates through the blood. That protein appears to promote…

Your body constantly produces cells that have done their job and stop dividing. Normally, the immune system clears them out…

Older skin is chronically mildly inflamed, even without any wound or infection.

In a Harvard laboratory, miniature brains survived for more than five years. During that time they developed in ways…

As we age, certain cells accumulate that can no longer divide. Rather than staying quiet, these cells continuously release…

Stem cell therapies are offered globally, including in clinics with little regulatory oversight. They can temporarily reduce…

Aging blood stem cells drive chronic inflammation. But what pushes those stem cells into that state in the first place? A…

Chronic lung diseases and metabolic conditions like type 2 diabetes seem unrelated. But aging cells that accumulate in lungs…

A protein that clumps together in Alzheimer’s disease also directly damages the energy-producing structures inside brain…

Your immune system remembers past threats so it can respond faster next time. But with age, that memory can go wrong.

The lining of your gut is renewed constantly by stem cells. But with age, those stem cells falter.

Senescent cells and cancer cells seem like opposites. But they share a key survival trick. A new drug combination exploits…

The immune system weakens as blood stem cells in the bone marrow age.

Older cartilage behaves differently from young cartilage, and researchers now partly know why. A protein that naturally…

Sometimes the thyroid produces less of its key hormone even when the gland itself is perfectly healthy. New research suggests…

Neurons are long cells with an unusual energy problem: they need to move their power generators (mitochondria) over large…

High blood pressure is one of the most common health problems in older adults. But why do some people develop it early, while…

When cells receive too little oxygen, they activate a broad genetic programme.

Skin cancer is often thought to begin in surface skin cells damaged by the sun or chemicals.

The tau protein has long been a prime suspect in Alzheimer’s disease.

Could simply shifting when you eat help keep your muscles stronger as you age?

Eating less protein extends lifespan in animals and shows promising signals in humans. Yet official guidelines recommend the…

Muscles gradually lose their ability to repair themselves with age. A new study identifies a protein that drives this repair…

A molecule normally known for transporting energy inside cells also controls whether the immune system raises the alarm. That…

Tau has long been a prime suspect in Alzheimer’s disease. Now it turns out the protein can also directly sabotage the…

After a heart attack, the heart heals poorly. Damaged tissue forms scar tissue, permanently weakening its pumping function.

Measuring biological age is hard. The best-known methods look at chemical marks on DNA.

Biological age tests based on DNA methylation are often called the gold standard of aging measurement. But a new study…

Every cell contains a tiny recycling plant called the lysosome. As we age, these structures begin to fail.

Senescent cells stop dividing but do not go quiet. They continuously send inflammatory signals to surrounding tissue. New…

The accumulation of senescent cells in tissues is one of the recognised drivers of aging. A new three-drug combination appears…

What if aging and disease could be read from a single component inside a cell?

Tests that estimate biological age using chemical marks on DNA perform poorly in people with mixed genetic ancestry.

The regulation of haem, the iron-containing molecule that gives red blood cells their oxygen-carrying ability, is tighter than…

Some people carry a silent time bomb in their blood: stem cells with a small genetic mutation that gradually multiply and take…

Immune cells tasked with attacking tumours burn out before completing the job. New research points to an energy deficit as the…

A small population of blood stem cells with a growth advantage can silently take over. This process, known as clonal…

Where exactly do senescent cells accumulate in the body? A major new project is mapping them systematically across organs,…

Not all senescent cells are alike. A new framework gives them an ordered classification for the first time, based on their…

Bones weaken as we age. That much is well known. But that the skin plays an active role in this process is new.

A 27-year-old woman in New York City died after receiving an intravenous infusion at a local wellness clinic. The treatment…

Every cell in your body carries the same DNA, but folds it differently. That folding determines which genes are switched on or…

Your blood cells may be biologically older than your calendar age. New research links a common age-related mutation pattern in…

A small shift in the amount of a single protein can reshape how heart cells organise their DNA. New research shows this may be…

Inside every cell sits a nucleus containing three metres of DNA, folded with precision. How that folding changes with disease…

Not every Alzheimer’s patient responds to treatment the same way. That has long been known, but there was no reliable method…

The immune system learns from every infection it encounters. That ability depends on a process in which immune cells…

Aging brain cells accumulate fat. That might sound trivial, but researchers now link this fat buildup directly to Alzheimer’s…

What a father eats before conception influences how his children develop.

When cells produce too many damaged proteins, they come under stress. A built-in emergency programme helps them survive.

The DNA inside our cells is not simply coiled up randomly. It has a precise three-dimensional structure that determines which…

Long-term alcohol use damages your DNA through oxidative stress, epigenetic changes, and direct harm to brain cells and sperm.…

In Parkinson’s disease, specific brain cells die preferentially. Researchers long believed a well-known mitochondrial quality…

A protein deep inside mitochondria maintains the genetic material of these energy organelles. With age, it falls out of balance.

Cells are filled with proteins that continuously shuttle between the nucleus and the surrounding cytoplasm. With age, that…

Older mice survive kidney poisoning far worse than young ones. The difference comes down to a cellular maintenance process…

We eat plants, and the energy-producing structures inside those plants may reach our brain.

When cells age, more changes than their appearance. Deep inside the cell nucleus, a reorganisation takes place that determines…

The well-known enzyme that maintains telomeres turns out to do far more than previously thought. It regulates a broad range of…

Which genes are active in whom, and when? A large-scale analysis charts genetic variants that drive gene activity. The…

Aging quietly damages the liver long before symptoms appear. Tiny vesicles derived from stem cells appear to partially reverse…

Tiny cell structures that rarely make headlines turn out to play a key role in aging. When they disappear, the cell’s energy…

Proteins that persist in the body for decades slowly accumulate sugar-linked damage. This damage has long been considered…

Chronic low-grade inflammation is one of the defining features of aging. But where does it originate? New research points to…

Senescent cells (cells that stop dividing and begin secreting harmful substances) were long treated as a single, uniform…

Older adults who closely follow a Mediterranean diet have higher blood levels of two small proteins linked to heart and brain…

A single ageing clock measurement tells you relatively little.

Chemotherapy saves lives but accelerates biological ageing in the body.

Cells form temporary storage hubs during stress, called stress granules. Researchers assumed these contained only proteins and…

Organs age faster when old immune cells linger too long. New research shows that tissue-resident macrophages, the body’s…

Calorie restriction, omega-3 fats, metformin: nutrition is often pitched as a brake on aging. But does it actually work at the…

What if part of aging is caused by cosmic particles shooting through us every second?

In the aging brain, damaged immune cells accumulate in a very specific region: the white matter.

Two very different anti-aging strategies target completely separate layers of the aging process. Researchers now propose…

Back pain from degenerating spinal discs is one of the most common age-related complaints worldwide. Signs can appear before…

Tiny hairs on your lung cells keep your airways clean. When those hairs stop moving properly, chronic disease follows. New…

Stem cell therapies often underperform in clinical trials. A new mouse study suggests that the hostile environment of aging…

Two cheap, widely available compounds can clear out damaged, ‘zombie’ cells from aging kidneys and partially restore organ…

After a heart attack, the body launches a repair response. But that response can turn against itself.

Not all cells in your body read their genes the same way. Even in healthy tissue, neighboring cells can activate different…

People who live to one hundred are rare. But their cells may hold a clue.

After a heart attack, small blood vessels in heart tissue are lost permanently.

Mitochondria are the cell’s power plants. But how they adjust their own output to changing demands was largely unknown. New…

Blindness caused by retinal damage affects millions of people worldwide. Scientists have now used stem cells to grow new blood…

Cells use tiny calcium pulses as switches for hundreds of processes. When those signals go wrong with age, the body…

One model that understands the biology of virtually every cell on Earth. That sounds far-fetched, but researchers have built…

The pancreas does not repair itself alone. A specific group of immune cells turns out to play a key role in sustaining the tissue.

Twelve weeks of exercise, dietary guidance and probiotic yogurt, and a biological aging clock moved. Can a simple lifestyle…

When blood vessel cells clear out damaged energy units, they release signals that ramp up immune activity.

When protective caps on DNA strands grow too short, cells fire off stress signals that damage surrounding tissue.

ALS kills nerve cells fast, and no treatment stops the process.

Scientists have guided kidney tissue into a more organised structure by using synthetic signal sources. The advance offers…

Mice and humans both age, but the underlying process differs fundamentally. Researchers have now built a mathematical model…

People who exercise regularly have muscle cells that look molecularly younger, even in old age.

Dozens of genes are known to influence ageing. Yet gene therapies targeting them remain nearly absent from clinical practice.…

Those dark spots on ageing skin are more than a cosmetic issue.

Blood stem cells become less reliable with age. But a layer of intermediate cells appears to compensate for that decline, and…

Scientists have built an artificial cell that can divide and copy its DNA. Whether it counts as truly alive is debated, but…

Senescent cells accumulate in the body and cause damage. Until now, measuring which tissues are most affected has been difficult.

A blood test that predicts chronic disease up to twenty years before diagnosis. New research published in Nature Aging…

Your gut lining renews itself constantly. Two proteins that help cells manage their own building blocks play a larger role in…

As we age, our blood-making system weakens. Researchers have now identified a single molecular brake that drives that decline…

What if hundreds of people could simultaneously test who is best at rolling back their biological age? That is the premise…

Stem cells are considered one of the great promises of anti-aging medicine. But how realistic is that promise?

Regular exercise keeps the brain healthy for longer. But how exactly does that work? New research turns the spotlight on the…

Older adults who exercise build less muscle than younger people following the same programme. New research points to a…

Genetic editing of human embryos is entering a new phase. A more precise version of CRISPR causes less damage than earlier tools.

Exhausted immune cells that accumulate as we age. One company thinks it can reprogramme them to behave like young cells again.…

Most butterflies live only a few weeks. But the Heliconius butterfly lives several times longer than closely related species…

Everyone knows vitamin B12 as an energy vitamin. But researchers are now finding that a deficiency strikes early, before…

When algae die en masse, it is not random. They coordinate their own death through a lightning-fast iron-catalyzed chain reaction.

Cells continuously measure how much oxygen is available. That turns out to matter not just during oxygen shortage, but also…

A detailed cell map of the human heart captures how the aortic valve forms, and shows that molecular signatures from embryonic…

What happens when brain cells lose their self-cleaning mechanism? Researchers long assumed the consequences would be swift and…

Semaglutide, caloric restriction, omega-3, and even ketamine all appear on the same list: interventions that measurably lower…

Your skin ages differently from your liver. Your muscle tissue follows a different pattern than your brain. But there are also…

What if drugs already approved for other diseases could also slow aging?

People who live to 100 aren’t just older versions of 80-year-olds. Their blood tells a different biological story.

Parkinson’s disease has long been difficult to study in the lab: animal models only partially replicate the human condition.

Aged cells cause inflammation throughout the body. Now researchers have identified a specific mechanism that drives this process.

What if a single injection could keep your organs healthier into old age? In mice, that principle now works in practice.

Which cells in the human body ‘stall out’ as we age, and exactly where? For the first time, researchers have mapped this…

Antioxidants are known for protecting cells. But new research shows they can also eliminate senescent cells under certain…

Your immune system remembers more than just infections. Immune cells can learn from earlier activation and respond more…

Can a parent’s experiences alter the biology of their children? The idea of inherited trauma has attracted enormous attention…

Clearing out worn-out cells before a stem cell treatment produces better outcomes. That is what a mouse study found when…

Scientists long assumed there was one universal pathway to slow aging. New research in worms suggests there are at least…

Exercise is good for you. Everyone knows that. But what if a pill could replicate its biological effects? That is exactly what…

A long-established antidepressant gave aging mice not just a longer life, but a healthier one. The mechanism behind it is…

How deeply does early life stress shape your biology decades later? A study in macaques offers a detailed answer, and it…

What happens inside the body after senescent cells are cleared? A new study maps the answer in unprecedented detail, and the…

Evolution has capped the speed of biological processes for billions of years.

Cells constantly sense and respond to mechanical forces from their surroundings.

The naked mole-rat lives up to ten times longer than comparably sized rodents.

Senescent cells are known to fuel chronic inflammation, but the precise molecular trigger has been elusive. New research…

Cancer is not only a disease of faulty genes. It is also a disease of a rearranged genome.

In bowel cancer, senescent cells in the surrounding tissue help tumours grow new blood vessels. That makes certain tumours…

A widely used weight-loss drug does more than shed pounds. Researchers found that semaglutide also slows biological aging, as…

Life Biosciences has become the first in the world to dose a patient with a gene therapy that rejuvenates aging cells in the…

One technique in ageing biology is absorbing nearly all investment. That raises questions about what gets left behind.

Mitochondria, the energy generators inside your cells, work less well as we age. Researchers found that falling levels of a…

A small piece of RNA released when a cell is under stress turns out to play a direct role in aging. Without this molecule,…

In Parkinson’s disease, one damaging protein accumulates inside nerve cells. Researchers have now uncovered a mechanism that…

The small intestine ages, and that process has now been mapped in detail at the level of individual cells for the first time.

How do you treat ageing? A new review in Signal Transduction and Targeted Therapy maps the landscape into two broad camps:…

A protein in brain cells turns out to be critical for Parkinson’s disease.

Why does labour begin when it does? The answer turned out to lie in a molecule familiar from ageing research: NAD.

When cells encounter damaging molecules like free radicals, they normally activate protective programmes. But who gives the…

We already know that biological age differs from chronological age. But how do you measure it reliably? Scientists disagree.…

The chronic low-grade inflammation that comes with old age has long been linked to dementia, heart problems and muscle loss.

A bear lies motionless for months and emerges in good physical shape. How that works is one of the questions that fascinate…

Large cells die differently from small ones. In a specific form of cell death driven by iron and fat oxidation, bigger cells…

A small group of people with a rare inherited mutation live on average seven years longer than others. They lack a working…

In healthy brains, an alarm system stands guard against invaders. In aging brains, that same system fires continuously,…

A newborn is biologically zero years old, even if its mother is fifty. The egg cell does something no other cell in the body…

As we age, more and more of our own DNA ends up in the wrong place inside our cells. The immune system reads this as an…

Bats live remarkably long lives for their size. Some species reach thirty to forty years, while similarly sized mammals die…

Errors in how chromosomes are divided during cell division seem unrelated to metabolism.

Brain cells dispose of waste proteins differently from other cells in the body. A newly discovered system turns out to be…

Chronic alcohol use damages the liver in multiple ways at once. Melatonin, best known as a sleep hormone, appears to block…

Collagen is the most abundant protein in the human body. For decades, doctors could not see it on an MRI scan. That has now…

In severe obesity, the heart works differently at the molecular level. A study in Science now shows exactly what changes…

Every time you breathe out, CO₂ levels in your blood briefly shift.

Exercise damages your cells. But that damage is precisely what makes you healthier. A protein called HMGB1 appears to be the…

A little-known protein has been shown to extend the lifespan of fruit flies by improving how their cells produce energy.

What if you could test how a cell responds to a genetic intervention before running a single experiment?

Scientists keep producing new tools to measure biological aging. The latest uses amino acid levels in blood. But does it…

There is a molecular brake on your DNA repair system. The more active that brake, the faster cells accumulate errors, and the…

One changed letter in a protein’s code can alter everything. New large-scale research maps how amino acid substitutions affect…

Science moves on the right questions. A gathering of leading aging researchers tried to define those questions from scratch.…

Some people reach a hundred in reasonable health. Others decline sharply in their seventies. A new review asks why, and the…

Mitochondria, the energy-producing structures inside cells, decline with age.

Cells have ways to permanently silence certain genes. One of those guardians is the protein MORC2.

What if aging is not a biological puzzle but a physics problem? A growing group of researchers is applying the laws of physics…

Genetically identical cells in identical environments still make different choices about what they become.

Tendons heal poorly. They have limited blood supply, repair slowly, and in older adults that repair is even slower.

Why do humans, mice, and whales show the same epigenetic aging patterns, despite living completely different lives? A new…

Aged skin heals more slowly. That has long been known. But a new experiment shows that removing damaged cells can…

Cells under stress temporarily halt protein production. That sounds like a useful defence. But researchers found that chronic…

Aging skin heals more slowly; that much has long been known. But a new experiment shows that clearing out damaged cells can…

When cells come under stress, they temporarily shut down protein production. That sounds like a useful trick. But researchers…

A small chemical tag on an amino acid turns out to play a surprisingly large role in cell biology.

Exercise improves metabolism in dozens of ways, but pinpointing which molecule causes which benefit is genuinely hard.

European health data sits locked in national systems. A new proposal in Science argues for a different approach: instead of…

Metformin has been the most prescribed type 2 diabetes drug for decades. New research now shows it also inhibits cancer cells…

Blue zones are held up as proof that certain environments make people live longer. But how solid is the data behind that idea?

Muscle stem cells in older animals struggle to activate. A new study pinpoints the reason: a specific metabolic pathway fueled…

Tumors damage surrounding tissue. That has long been known. But a new study shows they also actively block the renewal of…

Measuring tissue aging usually requires a biopsy or imaging scan. A newly developed probe could make it as simple as…

People in excellent physical condition score almost identically to sedentary peers on most mainstream epigenetic aging clocks.…

Mammals that live in organized social groups tend to live longer than solitary species. The pattern holds across dozens of…

Detecting the buildup of aging cells in the body has always required invasive tissue samples. A new study suggests a simple…

Lung disease kills more people than most realize. And aging is the silent driving force behind nearly all of it, even when the…

Aging tissue is stiffer than young tissue. It turns out that stiffness is not just a symptom of aging, it may be one of the…

Older people often say time seems to pass faster than it used to. A new theory links this to a concrete mechanism: the energy…

Astronauts returning from space look as though they have aged by years. That is not coincidence.

A researcher at Rockefeller University has mapped how aging unfolds across nearly seven million cells from 21 mouse tissues at…

Inject genetic code into cells, then switch it on from outside the body using an electromagnetic device. It sounds like…

Age-related muscle loss has long been blamed on stem cells that simply wear out over time.

Your body is full of proteins that have been chemically modified by sugar, not because of what you eat, but because of basic…

A shark older than five hundred years, swimming through waters it has known since before the Industrial Revolution.

Imagine a trial on a dietary intervention finding that participants become biologically younger.

A three-year-old mouse is near the end of its life. A thirty-year-old naked mole-rat looks barely different from how it did at…

Every cell in your body lives inside a kind of scaffolding, a web of proteins that provides structure, relays signals, and…

April 2026 was a busy month for researchers treating aging as a biological problem to be solved.

When a key energy-producing protein is reduced in cancer cells, the tumors don’t slow down, they accelerate. New research…

Most aging researchers focus on fixing the body’s damage. But a growing faction argues that some things are simply too broken…

What if the human body eventually becomes too damaged to fix?

Spatial transcriptomics, the technology that maps which genes are active where inside a tissue, is one of the most exciting…

One of the twentieth century’s most devastating epidemics may have done something extraordinary: triggered a measurable…

Millions of people are already experimenting with senolytic treatments to slow aging.

April 2026 was a busy month for longevity science. New findings, clinical progress and policy shifts, a look at where the…

Kangaroos independently evolved thick tooth enamel, just like several other large mammals did before them.

Life on Earth uses twenty amino acids to build every protein in every living thing. Researchers wondered whether all twenty…

Naked mole rats live thirty years. Ordinary mice barely manage two.

COPD, the lung disease that slowly robs people of their breath, has long been considered irreversible.

What if the key to fighting aging isn’t repairing damaged cells and organs, but simply replacing them?

A worm barely a millimeter long can sniff out bacteria enriched with a specific amino acid it cannot make itself.

The textbook account of how adult blood is made has a clean simplicity to it: bone marrow stem cells do the job, period.

Mitochondria, the structures inside every cell that generate energy, are known to decline with age. What is less understood is…

Heart muscle cannot grow back after a heart attack. The dead tissue becomes scar tissue, and that scar gradually undermines…

Dasatinib and quercetin, the most widely used senolytic combination in longevity circles, causes damage to specific brain…

Conferences are filling up, startups are raising money, and the first human trials of treatments aimed at reversing biological…

Researchers have identified a molecular switch inside the body’s blood-forming cells that gets triggered by stress and appears…

In a mouse model of spinal disc degeneration, a cheap, decades-old drug combination beat a newer and more expensive competitor.

Not all ant colonies build at the same pace. New experiments show that the age structure of a colony, how many young versus…

On June 4, 2026, a full-day longevity event in Lisbon will bring together scientists, clinicians, investors, and founders. The…

Your DNA doesn’t change, but the way your genes are read does.

Cells that have stopped dividing and are normally considered a hallmark of aging turn out to play a crucial role in wound healing.

Your DNA doesn't change, but the way your genes are read does.

Cells that have stopped dividing and should arguably be gone turn out to play a key role in wound healing in young animals.

A roundup from the Lifespan Research Institute surveys what happened in rejuvenation science over the first months of 2026.

Aging research in Europe is well-funded and growing fast. But scientists in different countries are largely working in…

Every cell in your body carries nearly identical DNA, yet a liver cell and a brain cell look and behave completely differently.

In longevity science, the word ‘breakthrough’ gets used a lot. A recent roundup from Lifespan.io surveys the state of the field.

When the blood-making system comes under pressure, the body has a fallback plan.

Which genes a cell switches on and which it keeps locked away is determined by more than DNA sequence alone.

Scientists have reprogrammed blood stem cells to generate a continuous supply of protective proteins, potentially for the…

Two of the most discussed phenomena in aging research, chronic low-grade inflammation and the biological clock of cells, are…

Two of the most talked-about phenomena in aging research, chronic low-grade inflammation and the biological clock of cells,…

Two of the most discussed processes in aging science, chronic low-grade inflammation and epigenetic changes in DNA, turn out…

Ribosomes are the molecular machines inside every cell that build proteins. They were long thought to work identically in…

Scientists studying how genes drive aging have long faced a frustrating problem: the tools to switch genes on and off in…

What if your immune system could be programmed once and then protect you for life, without ever needing a booster?

It sounds counterintuitive: slightly damaging your cells to make them stronger. Yet that’s precisely the principle behind one…

A drug used for decades to treat a rare blood cancer turns out to also clear senescent cells, the so-called zombie cells…

Bacterial cells can radically shift their internal molecular composition in response to changing conditions. Yet something…

After damage, lung stem cells produce their own molecular signal that tells them when to start regenerating.

Suppressing IGF-1, a growth signaling pathway that has been studied for decades as a key to longer life, barely extends…

Ten thousand years ago, humans started growing crops and raising animals.

Every cell in your body is constantly building proteins, the molecules that do nearly everything. But exactly how that…

A salamander loses a leg and grows it back. We lose a fingertip and it’s gone forever.

A one-time treatment that makes your body produce its own medicines, for life.

When mice are trained to fear a specific odor, the structure of their offspring’s smell system changes, even though those…

Nearly half of the human genome consists of remnants from ancient viral infections. In youth, cells keep these sequences…

NAD+ supplements have attracted enormous attention as potential anti-aging interventions.

A fragment of a protein that normally helps organise the cell’s genetic material can create small, temporary gaps in DNA, and…

Cells are wrapped in a thin membrane made mostly of fat. For decades, that membrane was treated as a passive scaffold.

A molecule central to how cells make energy drops sharply as we age. Scientists have known for years that supplements can…

Some animals simply grow a new leg when the old one is gone. Humans don’t.

Every cell contains millions of proteins that must be in exactly the right place at the right time.

Life Biosciences is about to become the first company to test a therapy that makes cells biologically younger, not as a…

Salamanders can regrow entire limbs. Humans can’t, with one exception: the tip of a finger.

The FDA doesn’t officially recognise aging as a disease. Yet this year, for the first time, a therapy designed to make cells…

Topping up a single supplement helps a little. But what if you also stopped the leaking?

Topping up one supplement helps a little. But what if you also plug the leak at the same time? Researchers put that…

The US drug regulator does not officially recognise ageing as a disease. Yet this year, for the first time, a therapy designed…

To eventually grow replacement organs, or even whole bodies, scientists first need to understand how an embryo does it.

Proteins are the machinery of life, and designing new, artificial ones was a slow and expensive craft for decades. AI has…

To one day grow new organs, or even entire bodies, scientists first need to understand how an embryo pulls it off. The latest…

Mitochondria have their own DNA, and errors in it accumulate as we age.

Pulmonary fibrosis is one of the most devastating age-related diseases, the lungs stiffen progressively, with no effective cure.

Ageing cells that refuse to die accumulate in our bodies and cause widespread damage. A new drug can now selectively eliminate…

A small biotech company is about to test whether ageing cells can literally be ‘rewound’ in living humans. If it works in the…

King penguins that move from the wild into a zoo suddenly find themselves living a life of unlimited food and complete rest.

Mitochondria, the energy generators inside our cells, carry their own DNA, separate from the cell’s nucleus.

Fat tissue ages just like the rest of the body. But why does it deteriorate faster in some people?

Nearly half the human genome consists of ancient ‘parasitic’ DNA, sequences that once copied and pasted themselves throughout…

Mitochondria have long been known as the cell’s energy generators.

From a vital aging research database that risks disappearing for lack of funding, to promising animal experiments with plasma…

Body fat has a reputation problem, but it also ages, and often faster than the rest of us.

Body fat is hardly celebrated as a hallmark of good health, but it ages too, and faster than you might think.

Two of the most well-known genetic risk factors for Parkinson’s disease both disrupt the same cellular process: waste disposal.

Proteins are fragile. Heat, acid, mechanical stress, they deform and fall apart.

A biotech company targeting so-called zombie cells, cells that stop dividing but refuse to die and instead damage surrounding…

Parkinson’s disease begins in the power plants of cells. Researchers have now found a way to deliver healthy versions of those…

Fat tissue ages. That much has been known for a while. But what drives the aging process inside individual fat cells has…

Parkinson's disease starts in the power plants of your cells. Scientists have now found a way to deliver healthy versions of…

A company focused on eliminating "zombie cells", cells that stop dividing but refuse to die and instead cause damage…

Not all immune cells are created equal in the fight against cancer.

The idea that young blood can rejuvenate aging tissue has been circulating for years. A new analysis in Science throws cold…

Spinal disc degeneration affects almost everyone as they age and is a leading cause of chronic back pain.

Animal studies confirm that high doses of nanoplastic particles cause tissue dysfunction.

Brief exposure to Yamanaka factors can reset cells epigenetically toward a younger state. In mice, the results are striking.

Frailty in older adults, the combination of muscle loss, fatigue, and heightened vulnerability, has no effective treatment.

By briefly exposing cells to the Yamanaka factors, you can epigenetically "wind back" those cells to a younger state. In mice,…

Frailty in older adults: the combination of muscle loss, fatigue and heightened vulnerability, still has no effective treatment.

Restricting protein triggers a conversion of white fat into brown fat, a metabolically healthier tissue type. But the body…

Long non-coding RNAs, stretches of genetic material long assumed to do very little, turn out to play a crucial role in…

Cellular senescence has been one of the most promising targets in aging science for years. Yet the road from the laboratory to…

Psilocin, the active compound your body produces from psychedelic psilocybin, makes human neurons grow in a measurably…

Aging is accompanied by a silent buildup of circular RNA molecules inside cells. Researchers long assumed this was a…

Stem cells produce reactive oxygen species that are normally considered harmful, but new research shows they actually use…

An AI-driven biotech company reports the first clinical results for a treatment that selectively targets senescent cells, not…

People are living longer. They are not necessarily living better.

Senolytics, drugs that selectively eliminate aged, dysfunctional cells, are among the most closely watched interventions in…

Cellular senescence has grown into one of the central themes in longevity science. But how far has the field actually come?

The first clinical evidence that senolytics can work selectively in human tissue is here, and it comes not in a pill but in a…

Transplanting mitochondria into living cells sounds like science fiction, but in mice with Parkinson's it worked surprisingly…

Misfolded proteins are among the leading drivers of age-related diseases, from Alzheimer's to Parkinson's. We know more and…

Mitochondria, the powerhouses of the cell, have been a promising but stubbornly hard-to-reach therapeutic target for decades.

A biotech company focused on destroying aging cells reports positive results from a phase 1 study of a skin treatment.

Mitochondria lack one of the most important DNA repair mechanisms that cell nuclei rely on. Yet mutations in mitochondrial DNA…

For the first time, a senolytic drug that specifically targets aged cells has shown positive results in a randomized,…

Almost everyone loses muscle mass and strength with age. That is not simply a matter of moving less; deep inside muscle…

Telomeres wear down with every cell division, and that wear counts as a biological clock.

Your sense of smell fades as you get older, something anyone with an elderly grandparent will recognise, yet something science…

An epigenetic clock predicts your biological age from DNA methylation patterns. Sounds precise. But what these clocks are…

Senolytics are compounds that clear out aged cells without damaging healthy ones. Until now, the options have been limited.

Imagine a cell that keeps its own log of which genes were active and when: an internal record that remains readable long after…

Neanderthals are often portrayed as rugged survivors who only died out because modern humans showed up. But a new analysis…

Transplanting mitochondria into living cells has long seemed more fantasy than medicine.

A biotech company targeting senescent cells has reported positive preliminary results from its first human trial.

A large-scale study in Science has for the first time mapped in detail the spatial and morphological organization of…

A new study has identified two polyunsaturated fatty acids that effectively eliminate senescent cells, the so-called "zombie…

Cellular senescence has become one of the most active frontiers in longevity science.

The hunt for safe senolytics, drugs that selectively eliminate aged, dysfunctional cells, has largely focused on repurposed…

Senolytics, drugs that selectively eliminate aged, dysfunctional cells, are among the most closely watched interventions in…

People are living longer. They are not necessarily living better.