Dinner Speech: Jörn Dengjel, Junior Fellow, School Life Sciences - LifeNet: "The fountain of youth – from a biological perspective"

Due to better living conditions in western countries increased life expectancies of respective populations can be observed. With age disease incident also increase and individual fitness decreases generating higher costs and bearing high socio-economic risks for western societies. Historically, aging has been regarded as an irresolvable, multi-factorial process occurring on different time and space scales. However, in the last decade evolutionary conserved, cellular pathways important in aging have been identified. This opens up opportunities to study the biology of aging and modulate age-related, disease relevant mechanisms. I will introduce current concepts of aging and discuss potential influence of cellular recycling pathways on age-related processes. Methods how to study relevant protein dynamics will be briefly explained.