Lab focus

The focus of our group is understanding the underlying process of aging and the mechanisms of action of drugs that have been shown to slow the aging process in model organisms. We have a particular interest in DNA damage and mutation, and in energy metabolism.

We use the Baker’s yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae as our model. This is the same yeast used to make alcohol in beer and causes bread dough to rise. We are also developing a novel model of aging in yeast to specially mimic post-mitotic cells. This will be accomplished by arresting the yeast cell cycle though genetic and nutritional means. We will then use repeated cycles of alternating induced mutations and selection for longevity to isolate new long-lived yeast variants. The genomes of these variants will be sequenced. This will hopefully allow us to identify new genes involved in the aging process, which would provide us with new drug targets, and eventually lead to the development of  new anti-aging drugs.