Cells derived from young bone marrow can alleviate renal aging – cool stuff!
Tag Archives: research
Don’t go to grad school! and other fairy tales
A reflection on encouraging undergraduates to pursue graduate eduction.
The fitness of organisms is measured by their ability to reproduce. Successful scientists make more scientists. Successful professors make more professors, so the story goes.
With some folks, honoring a successful academic pedigree is almost a fetish. And it’s not just something that happens at research institutions, For those of us at teaching-focused institutions, sending students on to PhD programs is a source of pride, and often seen as a sign of successful mentorship.
On a day to day basis working with students, there are two huge facts that overshadow my mentoring relationships:
The first fact is that faculty positions are hard to get. Even if you’re very good, there is a huge amount of luck involved in grabbing the brass ring. Many PhD students and postdocs recommend that undergraduate professors not encourage their students to go to graduate school, because of the state of the academic job market. (
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Academia doesn’t have a PhD problem, it has an attitude problem
Really interesting post on the “PhD Problem”
A month after last January’s State of the Union Address, in which President Obama called for an increase in STEM graduates, The Atlantic published this piece on the “Ph.D Bust,” lamenting the decline in academic job placement rates for scientists. The latter has been making the rounds again, coincident with the latest William “Don’t get a PhD” Pannapacker’s piece in which he reiterates that a humanities PhD is an immense investment of time and money, and that the job prospects are prohibitively dismal. Meanwhile, says Pannapacker, we know very little about job placement rates for PhDs, (if you have a moment, please fill out your information at the PhD Placement Project), and– most tellingly, to me– Academia is doing a deplorable job in general of preparing students for “alternative careers.”
This, to me, is the crux of the matter. People call Academia a pyramid scheme; certainly, if one scholar produces…
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Aging like a fine wine
Recent research indicates that we may actually get better with age… in some ways, anyway. Although increases in age are associated with physiological decline, it looks as if emotional resilience and a positive self-image help to keep us young and happy. Here’s a link to the news article:
http://www.biosciencetechnology.com/news/2012/12/paradox-aging-older-we-get-better-we-feel
And a link to the primary research:
http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/article.aspx?articleid=1478351
Resveratrol May Not Extend Life | The Scientist
Resveratrol May Not Extend Life | The Scientist.
Hector et al. recently published a meta-analysis of the overall effects of resveratrol (link below).� Overall, resveratrol it seems to decrease risk of death, but the strength of the effects are highly variable depending upon species. It seems to extend lifespan reliably in yeast and worms, but not so reliably in other critters. Too bad! We all love our red wine… we’ll have to await the results of human trials… Who’s with me??
The paper in Biology Letters: http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2012/06/13/rsbl.2012.0316
DNA Methylation Declines with Age | The Scientist
DNA Methylation Declines with Age | The Scientist.
DNA methylation is one method by which the expression of our genes (how much protein our genes make and when) can be changed within mere minutes. With age, our genes make proteins less reliably – they’re produced (or not) at inappropriate times or at inappropriate levels. Some researchers think this phenomenon can lead to age-related disease. This article in The Scientist gives an update on the status of research on why and how this wide-scale gene dysregulation happens, and how it relates to the aging process.
Parkinson’s Vax Enters Clinical Trials | The Scientist
Parkinson’s Vax Enters Clinical Trials | The Scientist.
In what is possibly the biggest news of the year, scientists in Vienna are entering trials to vaccinate people against Parkinson’s Disease. The method is based upon building an immune response to alfa-synuclein, a protein naturally produced by the body. This smacks of the potential for massive organ failure due to a massive auto-immune response, akin to what we saw in the early days of gene therapy. I hope I’m wrong…
Here is the full press release: http://www.affiris.com/html/en/presse_medien/pressemeldungen.html
Targeting DNA | The Scientist
Targeting DNA | The Scientist.
After more than a decade of failure (and even several human deaths), gene therapy trials are becoming more successful and less risky…
Inflammation and Aging
A paper published online in Molecular Cell has reported the results of a study that blocked a certain protein from being expressed in mice. The protein AUF1 is critical for binding and degrading mRNA specific for pro-inflammatory molecules. In this study, the mice lack AUF1, and (not surprisingly) they have a dampened inflammatory response. A bit surprising is the news that, even in a germ-free environment, the mice age very quickly. After further study, authors concluded that the anti-inflammatory AUF1 not only binds and degrades mRNA for pro-inflammatory molecules, but it also acts as a transcription factor responsible for triggering the production of telomerase – a very strange double-role for this type of molecule. Without telomerase, the chromosomes of the mice become degraded very quickly and the mice age prematurely.
Here is the popular science write-up (though take the “shocked” tone of the article with a grain of salt – we’ve suspected that inflammation and aging were connected for years – it is my understanding that it’s the dual role of AUF1 that is surprising and cool): http://the-scientist.com/2012/05/24/the-aging-and-inflammation-link/
Here’s a link to the primary research article: http://www.cell.com/molecular-cell/abstract/S1097-2765%2812%2900341-3
Telomeres predict lifespan in Zebra Finches, Neural proteins a lynchpin in neurodegenerative disease
Two bits of news out in the past few days. Although the theory that telomeres (the tips of chromosomes) play a role in organismal aging has taken hits in the past decade, a paper out in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences presents evidence that telomere length in early life reliably predicted lifespan in a population in zebra finches. Popular science article.
Scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have discovered a neural protein that appears never to be replaced. In the rats they studied, these transport proteins appear to be as old as the rats themselves. The discovery has led the investigator to hypothesize that damage to the proteins may lead to aging and neurodegeneration. Read the popular science article here.
Rose M. Reynolds, Ph.D. 
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