A detailed network of transcriptome regulation associated with life-span extension in model organisms

In worms, flies and mice, it has been known for a long time that reduced feeding can result in longer life-spans, and in recent years, simple manipulations in the way these animals sense and response to sugars through insulin have also been shown to increase life-span. However, we are still a long way from understanding the mechanisms involved in food restriction and disruption of insulin signalling. To make this even more difficult, recent discoveries have shown that the cells that make up worms, flies, mice and even ourselves are much more complicated than we ever imagined. The work proposed would use leading-edge technologies to try to understand the mechanisms associated with longer life-spans in animals such as worms and flies where experiments would take months instead of years (mice) or a lifetime (humans). These new technologies generate huge amounts of data and will give the most detailed view possible of the changes that happen in worms and flies to make them long lived. The identification of similar changes in worms and flies (animals that are separated by millions of years of evolution) would suggest a mechanism that is highly conserved and may exist in other animals like mice or humans.