Department of Biophysics and Biochemistry University of California, San Francisco / San Francisco, CA
My project focuses on the biology of aging in the nematode C. elegans. I am studying early stochastic determinant of life span that are not linked to hereditary traits.
I grew up in France and moved to Canada to do my PhD work at the University of Montréal, where I studied cellular aging in fission yeast. I developed this yeast species (called S. pombe) as a new model to study aging, describing the first long-lived mutants of this organism. I was passionate about my research and today in Cynthia Kenyon’s lab at UCSF I am tackling new questions in aging using C. elegans as a model. In the past 20 years, research has demonstrated that aging is not a random process but one that is tightly regulated. We now know about many genes and conditions that extend life span and at the same time delay the onset of age-related diseases. However many mysteries remain: What determines aging at the molecular level? Why are aging rates different between individuals in a given species? Why do some species live longer than others?