Collaborative Research: An integrative approach to understanding variation in patterns of aging in primates

人类的寿命在上个世纪翻了一番，这与年龄相关疾病的增加有关。这些疾病源于与年龄相关的身体功能的自然退化，但目前尚不清楚跨系统的退化——例如骨质流失和免疫系统功能下降——是如何相关的。人类的衰老模式和与年龄相关的疾病是否受到当代和祖先环境不匹配的进一步影响仍有待确定。对衰老模式和年龄相关疾病发病时间的个体差异的关键影响仍有待发现。该项目研究野生非人类灵长类动物，以研究随着年龄增长而退化的生物系统，并深入研究衰老速度个体差异背后的机制。该研究通过确定与年龄相关疾病相关的特定社会和生命过程因素，提供了有价值的衰老比较数据，加深了对人类衰老模式的理解。该项目支持一名博士后研究员和多名本科生的培训和专业发展，支持当地社区外展和参与，支持美国K-12学校的科学外展。该项目建立在过去15年对相同人群的数据收集基础上，提供了来自100多人的丰富的行为和人口数据背景。早期生活和成年期的社会逆境、累积的生殖努力以及生物衰老的多种标记都是衰老模式和结果的预测因子。该项目的主要目标是确定：1)在整个生命过程中衰老的轨迹，包括身体退化（通过骨骼和肌肉损失来衡量）、生理失调（通过激素和免疫标记来衡量）和衰老的分子特征，并将结果与现有的人类和其他非人类灵长类动物的衰老数据集进行比较；2)影响个体间生物衰老速度差异的因素和时间，包括社会地位、社会群体成员身份的创伤性变化、社会整合不良和生育努力的增加。通过将丰富的纵向数据集与生理学、医学成像、分子技术和比较方法的前沿方法相结合，本研究为野生种群中非人类灵长类动物的衰老模型增加了一个小但数量不断增加的模型，可以为理解人类衰老和衰老相关退化的进化和变化建立一个信息背景。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Human lifespan has doubled in the last century, and this has been linked to an increase in age-associated disease. These diseases stem from the natural age-associated deterioration of bodily function but it is unclear how deterioration across systems – for example, bone loss and decreased immune system function – are related. It also remains to be determined whether patterns of aging and age-associated disease in humans are further impacted by a mismatch between contemporary and ancestral environments. Key influences on individual differences in patterns of aging and timing of onset of age-related disease remain to be uncovered. This project studies wild-living non-human primates to examine the biological systems that deteriorate with age, and drills down into the mechanisms behind individual differences in the rate of aging. This study contributes valuable comparative data on aging that deepens an understanding of human aging patterns through identifying specific social and life course factors associated with age-related disease. This project supports the training and professional development of a postdoctoral researcher and multiple undergraduate students, local community outreach and engagement, and science outreach in K-12 schools in the U.S.This project builds on over fifteen prior years of data collection on the same populations, which provides a rich context of behavioral and demographic data from over 100 individuals. Social adversity in early life and adulthood, cumulative reproductive effort, and multiple markers of biological aging are included predictors of aging patterns and outcomes. The main aims of the project are to identify: 1) the trajectory of aging across the life course with respect to physical deterioration (as measured by bone and muscle loss), physiological dysregulation (as indexed by hormone and immune markers), and molecular hallmarks of aging, and compare the results with existing datasets on aging from humans and other nonhuman primates; 2) the factors and timing that exert the strongest influence on inter-individual differences in the pace of biological aging, including social status, traumatic changes in social group membership, poor social integration, and increased reproductive effort. By coupling a rich longitudinal dataset with cutting edge methods in physiology, medical imaging, molecular techniques, and comparative methods, this study adds to a small, but growing number of nonhuman primate models of aging in wild populations that can build an informative context for understanding the evolution of, and variation in, human aging and aging-related deterioration.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.