Why Aging May Be a Program, Not a Breakdown

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The short version

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• Junyue Cao, a cell biologist at Rockefeller University in New York City, analyzed gene expression in millions of mouse cells from different life stages.
• He was surprised to find that “changes in aging are not universal across all the cells,” he said.

What happened

Cao’s interest in aging began in high school in Hebei, China, when he became acutely aware that his grandparents and parents were not going to live forever. While many teenagers awakening to mortality might turn to poetry or self-destructive behavior, Cao turned to science.

Why it matters

Finding a way to slow aging became his lifelong goal, and it’s why he chose biology as his major at Peking University in Beijing.

Summary by Nerd News Network. Read the full article at Quanta Magazine via the links above and below.