The Toll of Time

Evolving Ourselves, The Man Who Touched His Own Heart, Bats, and The Invaders

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

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

March 2015's selection of notable quotes

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

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

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

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.

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

Living longer doesn’t necessarily mean living healthier.

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

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

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

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

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.

Assistant Professor, Huffington Center On Aging, Baylor College of Medicine. Age: 38

Keeping track of frozen biological samples

CRISPR/Cas is all the rage—and getting more precise and efficient.

How to navigate the choppy waters of scientific publication

How to navigate the slings and arrows of conducting “controversial” research

Galileo’s improvements to the microscope led to the first published observations using such an instrument.

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