Anti-Aging and Energy Metabolism Research

In modern society, human lifespan is being increased, in part due to the advance of medical care. However, health span is not increased accordingly. Disorders in energy metabolism, such as obesity and diabetes, are becoming prevalent in the aged population worldwide. These disorders not only cast a great burden on health care system in many industrial countries. They also shorten the health span, which would in turn increase the disable years and years of living without quality and dignity.

Our laboratory is working on the effect of energy metabolism on aging. We have found that a shortterm starvation stress can improve physiological viabilities, such as sperm production and locomotor activity, etc., in the aged animals. Currently, we have focused on researching the stress-induced molecular regulation that leads to these improvements. Our goal is to understand the regulatory mechanism and then develop effective therapeutic approaches to prevent early onset of aging and physiological disability.

At the present, most of our experiments are carried out in the nematode, C. elegans. Routinely, we employ genetic manipulation technology to create mutant C. elegans for our study. In addition, to evaluate the stress effect on the health status, we have developed numerous assay systems to examine the viability of their physiol- ogies, including spermatogenesis, lipid metabolism and neuroendocrine functions, etc.