Why should a behavioral scientist study telomeres? Mainte nance of telomeres, the natural ends of linear chromosomes, is a fundamental biological mechanism of all eukaryotic cells, from protozoa to humans. Gradual shortening of telomeres after each cell division eventually can lead to loss of cellular division capacity and cell death, and contribute to genomic instability, a characteristic of c...

Susceptibility for giant cell arteritis increases with chronological age, in parallel with age-related restructuring of the immune system and age-induced remodeling of the vascular wall. Immunosenescence results in shrinkage of the naïve T-cell pool, contraction of T-cell diversity, and impairment of innate immunity. Aging of immunocompetent cells forces the host to take alternative routes for ...

Until recently, there was broad consensus in the stem cell aging field that the phenotype of aged hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) is fixed-dominated by cell-intrinsic regulatory mechanisms that cannot be altered by pharmacological or genetic means. The conventional thinking was that HSC aging could not be reverted by therapeutic intervention. This paradigm has started to shift dramatically, pri...

Aging of the hematopoietic stem cell compartment is believed to contribute to the onset of a variety of age-dependent blood cell pathophysiologies. Mechanistic drivers of hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) aging include DNA damage accumulation and induction of tumor suppressor pathways that combine to reduce the regenerative capacity of aged HSCs. Such mechanisms do not however account for the chang...

The problem of regulating cell division and cell growth is undoubtedly one of the most fundamental problems of both theory and practice of contemporary biology and medicine. Modern theories of aging suggest a close relationship of aging and the processes of growth and development, also consider the age-related decrease in cellular self-renewal of tissues due to their decreased growth potential ...