Doctoral Dissertation Research: The effect of lifetime investment in reproduction and physical activity on women's rates of senescence

是什么导致了女性衰老速度的变化？这一博士论文项目是对农村和城市女性的比较研究，以调查终身生殖行为和体力活动模式是否对生物衰老有长期影响。研究人员将研究与生殖和身体行为相关的生理机制，这些行为在女性的一生中会给她们的身体带来巨大的负担。该项目的发现将有助于我们在细胞水平和人类生活史的背景下理解衰老。该项目将促进国际合作，支持参与实地考察和实验室活动的学生获得新的研究技能，并产生可能为妇女健康和老龄化的临床和政策研究提供信息的数据。这项研究考察了在女性不得不将有限的资源分配给整个生命过程中相互竞争的能量需求的情况下，生理权衡是否会影响衰老的速度。它采用了一种对比设计，对两个人群--农村和城市妇女--进行了终身生殖投资，并对比了她们的体力活动水平。研究人员预测，女性一生的生殖投资水平将与她们的氧化应激水平直接相关，氧化应激是有氧代谢导致的细胞损伤的标志，也是生理衰老的潜在指标。他们进一步预测，在一生中从事剧烈体力活动的农村女性，将比城市女性表现出更高的生理衰老速度--超过生殖衰老的影响。这项研究将是第一次测试生命过程中的投资与生物衰老速率变化之间的关联，同时评估对生命周期中衰老速率变化的机械解释。

What drives variation in how fast women will age? This doctoral dissertation project is a comparative study of rural and urban women to investigate whether lifetime reproductive behaviors and physical activity patterns have long-lasting impact on biological aging. The investigators will examine the physiological mechanisms associated with reproductive and physical behaviors that energetically tax women's bodies across their lives. Findings from the project will contribute to our understanding of aging at the cellular level and in the context of human life history. The project will promote international collaboration, support the acquisition of new research skills for students participating in fieldwork and lab activities, and produce data that may inform clinical and policy research on women's health and aging. This study examines whether physiological tradeoffs impact rates of senescence in contexts where women have to allocate limited resources to competing energetic demands across the life course. It uses a comparative design with two populations - rural and urban women - who vary in lifetime reproductive investments and contrast in their physical activity levels. The researchers predict that women's levels of lifetime reproductive investment will be directly associated with their levels of oxidative stress, a marker of cellular damage resulting from aerobic metabolism and a potential indicator of physiological aging. They further predict that rural women, who assume vigorous physical activity over their lifetime, will demonstrate greater rates of physiological senescence relative to urban women - over and above the aging effects of reproduction. This research will be among the first of its kind to test the association between investments over the life course and variation in rates of biological aging while evaluating a mechanistic explanation for variation in rates of senescence over the lifespan.