Professor Jiyue Zhu of the College of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences has received a five-year, $2.3 million grant from the National Institute on Aging to study human telomere homeostasis in collaboration with the college’s Christopher Davis. Telomeres are the protective caps of chromosomal ends and function as an aging clock. In adult humans, telomeres get shorter every time cells multiply. This ultimately causes cells to lose their ability to proliferate, a process known as replicative aging. Some cell types—such as reproductive cells and cancer cells—are not subject to replicative aging because a gene encoding the telomerase enzyme, which helps to reset telomere length, is turned on in these cells.
They plan to study how loss of telomere length contributes to human aging. Specifically, the researchers will study how short telomeres affect lifespan and explore ways to extend health span, the part of a person’s life with good health.