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Updated: Mar 26, 2026

Techniques to Induce and Quantify Cellular Senescence
Published on: May 1, 2017
Cell-Nonautonomous Mechanisms Underlying Cellular and Organismal Aging
Younes Medkour1, Veronika Svistkova1, Vladimir I Titorenko1
1Department of Biology, Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
Abstract:
Cell-autonomous mechanisms underlying cellular and organismal aging in evolutionarily distant eukaryotes have been established; these mechanisms regulate longevity-defining processes within a single eukaryotic cell. Recent findings have provided valuable insight into cell-nonautonomous mechanisms modulating cellular and organismal aging in eukaryotes across phyla; these mechanisms involve a transmission of various longevity factors between different cells, tissues, and organisms. Herein, we review such cell-nonautonomous mechanisms of aging in eukaryotes. We discuss the following: (1) how low molecular weight transmissible longevity factors modulate aging and define longevity of cells in yeast populations cultured in liquid media or on solid surfaces, (2) how communications between proteostasis stress networks operating in neurons and nonneuronal somatic tissues define longevity of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans by modulating the rates of aging in different tissues, and (3) how different bacterial species colonizing the gut lumen of C. elegans define nematode longevity by modulating the rate of organismal aging.
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