Controlling autophagy in the intestine to rejuvenate.

ongoing

Human life expectancy is continuously increasing worldwide. However, longer lives must be accompanied by the increased health of older people. Therefore, the scientific community has set a goal to understand the causes of aging and how to revert them, aiming not only at living longer but living healthier. With this proposal, using telomerase mutant zebrafish as a prematurely aging model, I aim to determine the interdependency between autophagy and aging. In particular, I will determine if modulation of autophagy can revert the causes of aging and improve organism’s health span. Knowing that the intestine is one of the first organs that deteriorate during adulthood, I will alter autophagy specifically in the intestine to revert inflammatory and behavioral phenotypes of aged fish. Moreover, I will study specific diet-microbiome associations in the intestine that might affect intestinal integrity, autophagy, and organism aging. The outcome of this research will create high-quality new knowledge on the relationship between gut autophagy and individual aging and will provide guidelines for the development of new anti-aging approaches.