The NIA Interventions Testing Program, which included UT Health San Antonio, worked with counterparts in Switzerland and Tennessee.
The Interventions Testing Program, which is funded by the National Institute on Aging (NIA), has reported the finding of numerous candidate genes that influence longevity. The three Interventions Testing Program sites—The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, The University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and The Jackson Laboratory at Bar Harbor, Maine—collaborated with Johan Auwerx’s lab at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Lausanne, Switzerland, and Robert W. Williams’ lab at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center at Memphis.
“Some candidate genes impacted female life span while others affected the male life span,” said Randy Strong, PhD, of the Sam and Ann Barshop Institute for Longevity and Aging Studies at UT Health San Antonio. “One cluster of genes increased longevity of both sexes. In a rarity for these types of studies, the findings were made in a population of mice with genetic diversity comparable to human populations.”
