Age is the greatest risk factor for chronic diseases such as cancer, frailty, muscle atrophy, arthritis and many others. This means we are living longer than ever before, but with a heavy burden of disease which impacts on our quality of life and poses serious socio-economical challenges we must meet.
Ageing is underlined by a progressive decline in tissues ability to repair and maintain themselves. A key mechanism contributing to this is telomere dysfunction. In organisms with restricted telomerase activity, which is the case of humans and zebrafish, telomeres shorten and get damaged with ageing, causing cells to die or become senescent. Senescent cells no longer divide and secrete factors that somehow impair the repair capacity of our tissues and organs, thereby contributing to disease. |
We Work at Sheffield University part of the new Healthy Lifespan Institute (HELSI), in a multi-disciplinary setting, Bridging THE Oncology & METABOLISM DEPARTMENT, CIMA AND the BATESON CENTRE
A holistic, lifecourse approach to ageing research
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HistologyWe work with adult zebrafish and perform histopathology analysis in collaboration with SkeleTAL, part of the Mellanby Centre for Bone Research at the Medical School at Sheffield University
ImmunofluorescenceWe perform immunofluorescence on different tissues in whole mount and in adult zebrafish sections, in collaboration with the Wolfson Light Microscopy Facility, at Faculty of Science at Sheffield University
FLOW CYTOMTERYWe analyse single cells and FACS-sort fluorescently-labelled cells from adult zebrafish tissues to perform different ex vivo assays.
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