You have reached the website for the Longevity Genomics research group, an NIA funded resource-related cooperative agreement. Through the navigation menu you will find pages describing our members, research projects, and open source data, tools, and resources that enable us and others to design translational strategies to promote healthy human aging based on genetic variants associated with longevity.
Project Summary
Our overall approach, as outlined in the flowchart below, is to use Longevity-Associated Variants (LAVs), gene-expression studies, and evidence from model organisms to identify Longevity-Associated Genes (LAGs). Mendelian Randomization (MR) analysis will evaluate the potential impact modulating LAG activity might have on longevity, and candidate Longevity-Associated Drugs (LADs) targeting LAGs will be identified. To learn more about specific projects, please click on the green icons and visit our project overview page.
Project Goals
- Create a research resource that is publicly available through this website to enable scientists to develop translational strategies to promote human longevity. Our publicly-available infrastructure will include the following.
- Software tools in the form of R packages and analysis walkthroughs in the form of vignettes that will enable researchers to adopt and extend our analytical methods.
- Datasets used by our project. Datasets will include genome-wide single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) association results for human age-related traits, functional human genomic annotation, information from tissue-specific expression quantitative trait locus (eQTL) studies, and datasets of chemical properties and protein targets of small molecule compounds.
- Results generated through our research. Results will include annotated genome-wide SNP association results, genetic instrumental variables that can be used in Mendelian Randomization analysis, expression profiles associated with traits relevant to human aging, and small molecule compounds targeting genes of interest and expression profiles associated with human aging.
- Armed with our data resources and software tools, outside researchers will be able to reproduce our results and extend our approaches to their own datasets. For those who prefer to browse results, our results will be available as downloadable files and through web-based solutions such as Shiny and ReportingTools, where appropriate.
- Develop translational strategies to promote human longevity using our research resource. Our translational strategies are based on the identification of modifiable factors that can be pharmacologically targeted and that are causally related to healthy human aging. We organize annual in-person meetings for project members in Washington DC to discuss our analysis methods and translational strategies. Together with our Research Planning Committee, we will design pilot studies to test the feasibility of prioritized translational strategies and we will provide small funding opportunities for scientists to perform these pilot studies. Following each meeting, we will post information about our prioritized translational strategies and pilot studies on the Publications page of this website.
Updates
Users should be aware that this site is still a work in progress. Many components of this site are under heavy development.
Funding
This project is funded by NIH grant U24AG051129 awarded by the National Institute on Aging (NIA).
Contact
Researchers interested in learning more about the Longevity Genomics project can contact Dan Evans (Daniel [dot] Evans [at] ucsf [dot] edu)