The Missing LINC To Human Healthy Ageing

During the last few decades, human lifespan has tremendously been extended. However, this longer lifespan has not been associated with longer healthspan but rather with accrued morbidities and diseases. What triggers the deterioration of the healthspan remains to be studied. Based on premature ageing syndromes where lifespan and healthspan are both rapidly altered due to mutations in one particular group of proteins found in the membrane of cell nuclei (LINC complex proteins), the present project aims to precisely define whether defects in these particular proteins occur in normal ageing and what they induce across the molecular and cellular scales using animal and human cardiac and skeletal muscle cells of different ages as model systems.