Kaitlyn Devine

Abstract:

Many factors associated with cellular aging are conserved from single-celled organisms to humans, but these factors are not fully understood. Retrotransposons are mobile DNA elements that are more active with age and can potentially damage DNA when they are mobile. However, our lab previously found that retrotransposons can increase lifespan in budding yeast under certain stress conditions by comparing yeast cells with no retrotransposons to derivatives of those yeast cells with about 20 copies of retrotransposons in their genomes. We have found that the IRE1 gene partly contributes to this lifespan extension. Currently, we are testing whether the CDD1 gene that is over-expressed when retrotransposons are present in cells also contributes to this lifespan extension.