A genome-to-phenome toolkit to accelerate research into aging in a naturally short-lived vertebrate mode
The short lifespan of non-vertebrate models (e.g. yeast, worms, flies) makes their use in aging research attractive, and they have been widely used to explore conserved regulators of aging. However, as a result of this experimental pragmatism, we still understand relatively little about processes that specifically regulate vertebrate aging. Although traditional vertebrate model systems (e.g. mouse, zebrafish) have been used in aging research, due to relatively long lifespan (> 2.5 years), experimental genetics remains challenging, time-consuming and costly. Because of its naturally short lifespan (~0.5 years), the African turquoise killifish is an emerging promising model for research on aging and chronic diseases. Dr. Benayoun proposes to tackle recurrent limitations of vertebrate aging research issues by developing a toolkit for cell type identification and targeted gene expression modulation in the naturally short lived turquoise killifish, which will then be leveraged to identify novel regulators of vertebrate health- and lifespan.
