Issue | March 2015 | The Toll of Time | The Scientist Magazine®

Cover Story

How We Age

The Scientist Staff | Mar 1, 2015 | 10+ min read

From DNA damage to cellular miscommunication, aging is a mysterious and multifarious process.

Features

Wrangling Retrotransposons

Andrei Seluanov, Michael Van Meter, and Vera Gorbunova | Mar 1, 2015 | 8 min read

These mobile genetic elements can wreak havoc on the genome. Researchers are now trying to understand how such activity contributes to the aging process.

Nourishing the Aging Brain

Morten Scheibye-Knudsen | Mar 1, 2015 | 10 min read

Research reveals how the brain changes as we age and hints at ways to slow the decline.

Contributors

Meet some of the people featured in the March 2015 issue of The Scientist.

Editorial

Age-Old Questions

How do we age, and can we slow it down?

Speaking of Science

March 2015's selection of notable quotes

Notebook

Beneficial Stats

Statisticians who normally crunch numbers to forecast trends in the food-service industry turn their attention to bettering treatment of ALS.

A Deathly Pallor

Global warming could lead to lighter-colored insects with waning immune defenses.

Slip Me Some Skin

Scientists tracing the history of livestock breeding probe parchment documents for genetic information.

Falling Out of the Family Tree

A mutation in an ethanol-metabolizing enzyme arose around the time that arboreal primates shifted to a more terrestrial lifestyle, perhaps as an adaptation to eating fermented fruit.

Critic at Large

Sharing Longevity Data

Aging research would greatly benefit from consistently making annotated life span data available.

Quantity or Quality?

Living longer doesn’t necessarily mean living healthier.

Modus Operandi

Tricky Transfections

A combination of microinjection and electroporation inserts genes into hard-to-reach cells.

The Literature

Rethinking Telomeres

Not only do telomeres protect the ends of chromosomes, they also modulate gene expression over cells’ lifetimes.

Growth Hormone Guidance

Intact growth hormone signaling pathways are needed for methionine restriction to extend mouse lifespan.

Long Live Collagen

Increased collagen expression is a common feature of many different pathways to extended longevity in worms.

Profile

Of Cells and Limits

Leonard Hayflick has been unafraid to speak his mind, whether it is to upend a well-entrenched dogma or to challenge the federal government. At 86, he’s nowhere near retirement.