Molecular mechanisms of neuronal aging in C. elegans

October 10, 2023
Noon – 1:00 p.m. PDT

SCCRS 250 or via Zoom
Meeting ID: 970 1395 6437
Passcode: 563108

Speaker: Dong Yan, PhD
Associate Professor in the Departments of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology, Neurobiology, Cell Biology at the School of Medicine, Duke University

About the Presentation
Aging-associated neurodegenerative diseases are major threats to the aging population. Patients suffering from these diseases have problems with memory, cognition and behavior. Unfortunately, none of aging-associated neurodegenerative diseases are curable, and most of, if not all, the clinical trials targeting known factors of these diseases have ended in failure. It seems that we need to rethink the influential factors affecting the onset of these diseases. Aging, which is natural to all of us, is the most obvious one of them. Yet, we do not fully understand the aging of the nervous system. C. elegans is one of the leading model organisms to study aging and neurobiology, and many factors identified in C. elegans also play similar functions in mammals. Using C. elegans as model, my lab is discovering conserved mechanisms playing key roles in regulating neuronal aging. In this seminar, I will present our recent studies of cell autonomous and nonautonomous mechanisms of neuronal aging.

Dr. Yan received a B.S. in Biology from Nankai University in 2001. Following an interest in neuroscience, he joined the Institute of Neuroscience, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, where he discovered the role of AKT local degradation in the establishment/maintenance of neuronal polarity. As a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, San Diego, where he demonstrated the essential role of a conserved MAP kinase pathway, the DLK-1 pathway, in axon regeneration and synapse regulation. Dr. Yan joined Duke University in September 2013. His lab focuses on addressing the molecular mechanisms undying neural circuit formation during development and neurodegeneration in aging.

For more information contact Michelle Sanchez.