Genetics of Human Ageing - from populations to mechanisms

The demography of human populations is changing; we are growing older. Ageing brings about increased frailty and disease susceptibility and this demographic change is incurring growing personal and societal costs. In the last three decades, research on animal model organisms, such as the fruit fly, has shown that ageing itself can be altered for an improved function in later life. This knowledge has the potential to generate therapies for human agerelated conditions. But while we understand a lot about the genetics of ageing in other animals, we know little about the genetics of human ageing.