telomere biology

How does early life adversity shape adult telomere dynamics?

/ Valeria Marasco / Leave a comment

Happy to annouce that our opinion manuscript dissecting out the potential link between early life adversity and adult telomere dynamics is now out in BioEssays

We discuss the main biological routes through which exposure to challenging conditions during development might induce long-lasting changes in the telomeric system, with potential consequences on reproduction and longevity. In this context, we propose three non-mutually exclusive hypotheses – Constraint, Resilience, and Pace of Life – and propose future studies to test them.

Stress influences telomere dynamics as predicted by changes in mortality rates

/ Valeria Marasco / Leave a comment

It is a pleasure to introduce our last paper on stress and ageing in #theFASEBJournal

This latest paper is associated with our previous findings where we found that the repeated exposure to challenging environmental circumstances during adult life increased chances of survival during middle adulthood, but not during young- or old-adulthood. Here we report that these effects are underpinned by changes in telomere dynamics, with stress-exposed birds showing reduced telomere loss in middle adulthood. Our data provides novel experimental evidence that telomere dynamics play a key role linking stress resilience and aging.