Program Area: Biological Sciences
.jpg "Bérénice Benayoun, PhD photo")
Bérénice Benayoun, PhD
Assistant Professor of Gerontology
Leonard Davis School of Gerontology
University of Southern California
Los Angeles, California, United States
Bérénice Benayoun, PhD
Assistant Professor of Gerontology
Leonard Davis School of Gerontology
University of Southern California
Los Angeles, California, United States
Steven Austad, PhD
Distinguished Professor
Department of Biology
University of Alabama at Birmingham
Birmingham, Alabama, United States
Dena Dubal, MD, PhD (she/her/hers)
Associate Professor
University of California San Francisco
San Francisco, California, United States
Duygu Ucar, PhD (she/her/hers)
Associate Professor
The Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medicine
Farmington, Connecticut, United States
In this symposium, the speakers will discuss how sex can influence aging trajectories using complementary perspectives and approaches across multiple biological scales and systems. Indeed, accumulating evidence across species has revealed that aging is a highly sex-dimorphic process. On the one hand, women outlive men consistently across populations, and most supercentanarians are women. On the other hand, especially after the onset of menopause, women are at increased risk for most age-related diseases (e.g. Alzheimer’s disease, osteoporosis, etc.). However, the molecular pathways underlying such sex-differences in aging and longevity are still largely unexplored and poorly understood. Dr. Austad will discuss how compatibility between the mitochondrial and nuclear genomes during aging is influenced as a function of sex. Dr. Dubal will discuss the impact of sex chromosome complement on cognition with aging in mouse models, and how sex chromosomes may underlie sex-differences in brain aging. Dr. Ucar will discuss work from her lab revealing that the genomic signatures of immune aging in humans are specific to sex. Finally, Dr. Benayoun will discuss how aging of innate immune cells (e.g. macrophages or neutrophils) is regulated by the female vs. male milieu, with sex-specific age-related trajectories remodeling the immune compartment in mice.
Individual Symposium Abstract First Author: Bérénice A. Benayoun, PhD – University of Southern California
Individual Symposium Abstract First Author: Steven N. Austad, PhD – University of Alabama at Birmingham
Individual Symposium Abstract First Author: Dena Dubal, MD, PhD (she/her/hers) – University of California San Francisco
Individual Symposium Abstract First Author: Duygu Ucar, PhD (she/her/hers) – The Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medicine