Delta Projects

As a complement to our project on the evolution of ageing, which attempts to explain differences in rate of ageing between species, this project focuses on comparisons between young and old, in animal models and ultimately in humans. Understanding the changes that occur as we age are a priority for turning gerontology into medical applications. Our goal is to employ modern high-throughput technologies not just to describe age-related changes and how they are translated into pathology but to help understand the mechanisms driving those changes. In other words, discriminate causes from effects of ageing in an attempt to interpret the origins of human ageing.

One of the goals of this project is to design a database with gene expression data for all in vivo studies of ageing having mammals as a priority. Although GenAge is a great resource for understanding the genetic basis of ageing, it does not typically include genes solely because they are differently expressed between young and old tissues. In this project we want to incorporate microarray data and past studies reporting, for instance, hormonal alterations with age to create a repository of molecular changes with age. In a sense we aim to create an expO equivalent for ageing research based on current efforts such as Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) and ArrayExpress, as well as published studies. Including physiological and tissue-level changes is also a possibility. Eventually, our objective is to interpret why age-related changes occur.

This project is still in its initial stages and is considered work-in-progress. Obviously, if you have published papers on the use of gene expression studies throughout mammalian in vivo lifespan, please submit your data to us.