What Is Aging Like in Humans?

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The skin of the worms there forever otn exactly well. They're not a good model for those kinds of tissues. And it's an important distinction, right? Because you could have the idea, for example, that what you're tweaking makes the animal better. But if it's the equivalent of changing hair from gray back to black, then you're not really changing the entire animal. So we have to keep those kinds of differences in mind when we do this experiment.

Aging -- everybody does it, very few people actually do something about it. Coleen Murphy is an exception. In her laboratory at Princeton, she and her team study aging in the famous C. Elegans roundworm, with an eye to extending its lifespan as well as figuring out exactly what processes take place when we age. In this episode we contemplate what scientists have learned about aging, and the prospects for ameliorating its effects -- or curing it altogether? -- even in human beings. Coleen Murphy received her Ph.D. in biochemistry from Stanford University, and is currently Professor in the Department of Molecular Biology and the Lewis-Sigler Institute of Integrative Genomics at Princeton. Home page at the Lewis-Sigler Institute Lab web page Princeton Profile Google Scholar publication page Twitter See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.