Award details

Centre for Integrated Systems Biology of Ageing and Nutrition

Reference	BB/C008200/1
Principal Investigator / Supervisor	Professor Tom Kirkwood
Co-Investigators / Co-Supervisors	Professor David Lydall, Professor Thomas von Zglinicki, Professor Anil Wipat
Institution	Newcastle University
Department	Institute for Ageing and Health
Funding type	Research
Value (£)	6,445,278
Status	Completed
Type	Research Grant
Start date	01/10/2005
End date	31/03/2011
Duration	66 months

Abstract

Throughout the developed world, and much of the developing world, life spans are continuing to get longer. As a result the fraction of the world's population that is old is increasing fast. For example, by 2050 it is projected that one in five people world-wide will be aged 65 and older. In order both to gain the maximum benefit from these longer lives and to minimise the personal and social costs of age-related dependency, it is important to investigate what can be done to bring about healthier ageing. One of the most important factors that appears to affect health in old age is nutrition. However, both the ageing process itself and how it is affected by nutrition are highly complex and as yet only partially understood. One of the evident features of ageing is that multiple factors contribute to the ageing of the body at all levels, from cells to organs to the system as a whole. Recent research has established that the body ages through the gradual lifelong accumulation of subtle faults in molecules and cells. There are many kinds of faults and they appear to interact in quite complex ways. Therefore, if we want to understand how ageing works and how nutritional factors affect both the processes that cause damage and the cellular mechanisms for carrying out maintenance and repair, we have to be ready to grapple with this complexity. One of the additional challenges is that there is considerable randomness in how damage arises so that within a given tissue there may a spectrum of cellular states, intact cells lying side by side with damaged ones. To put together the necessary understanding of the complex effects of ageing and nutrition, we plan to use the relatively new scientific approach known as 'systems biology' and to create a Centre for Integrated Systems Biology of Ageing and Nutrition (CISBAN). The research will be done by performing very thorough measurements on how genes are expressed at a very fine-grained level within ageing cells tissues and on the resulting proteins. We will also need to measure the levels of cellular and molecular damage at this fine-grained level. From all of these data we will assemble mathematical models of how the system works as a whole, developing and using new techniques for handling such large data sets and for making statistical inference about the parameters that describe the various components. The models will be simulated on powerful computers using newly developed modelling software. The model predictions will then be used to guide the next series of experimental studies, and so on. CISBAN will be based in a new, state-of-the-art research building which was designed with exactly this kind of research in mind. Part of our aim is to develop and train new kinds of scientists by taking biologists, mathematicians, statisticians, computer scientists and engineers and making them work together, so that they can pool their strengths and learn new things from each other. We are also aiming to explore how the findings from our research can be put to work to bring benefits of healthier ageing to individuals and the population as a whole. This will be done by developing partnerships with companies that have shown interest in such approaches.

Summary

unavailable

Committee	Closed Committee - Genes & Developmental Biology (GDB)
Research Topics	Ageing, Systems Biology
Research Priority	X – Research Priority information not available
Research Initiative	Integrative and Systems Biology (ISB) [2004-2005]
Funding Scheme	X – not Funded via a specific Funding Scheme

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