Hello there! I'm Zehra 👋🏼.
I'm a junior in high school who conducts cellular and molecular biology research, and my future goal is to figure out how to kickstart senescent cells back into the cell cycle using proteomics technology. Learning is a passion and hobby of mine, but my scientific niche lies in longevity research.
So first...what is "longevity research"?
An article from Technology Networks defines it best as the science of "understanding the biological processes behind how we age, with the aim of delaying or preventing age-related disease" [1]. When we think of "aging", we typically think of an old person with wrinkles or something of the sort. However, aging is much more complex than that.
As humans grow older, our cells encounter more and more environmental stressors which our cells have to fight off. Over time, our cells lose their efficacy, or their ability to continue fighting off oxidative stress. This causes routine operations in the cell to start going wrong, eventually leading to aging-associated diseases such as Alzheimer's disease, heart disease, cancer, arthritis, and many many more. But it doesn't have to be this way. If scientists can figure out how to keep the cell effective – how to fortify it so that it stays able to fight off stress – we can essentially solve aging.
...which leads me to this page! Here I'm going to talk about the latest advances in research pertaining to this topic of longevity research and why it specifically is so so fascinating. Subscribe to our Monthly Memos to keep up and check out the other articles on this page!