Topic: longevity

Nature staff discuss evidence from whales and mole rats suggesting that DNA repair may contribute to longevity, and how COVID-19 can reactivate dormant viruses.

Narratives of human evolution have focused on cortical expansion and increases in brain size relative to body size, but considered that changes in life history, such as in age at sexual maturity and thus the extent of childhood and maternal dependence, or maximal longevity, are evolved features that appeared as consequences of selection for increased brain size, or increased cognitive abilities that decrease mortality rates, or due to selection for grandmotherly contribution to feeding the young. Here I build on my recent finding that slower life histories universally accompany increased numbe

Exposure to early life stress (ELS) can alter neurodevelopment and is implicated in disease risk in later life, including psychiatric and behavioural disorders. The developing brain is plastic, thus ELS may affect the development trajectory of the brain by altering processes such as neurogenesis. ELS is known to impair adult hippocampal neurogenesis, however, the brain regions, cell types and underlying molecular mechanisms altered by ELS during development are unclear. Using an optogenetic zebrafish model to elevate stress hormone levels, we analysed the effects of ELS on neurogenesis during