Coming Attractions: Interview with Monica Driscoll

The effects of diet and exercise on aging are issues that seem to be fairly common sense to most people at this point: eat healthy, exercise, and you will live longer right? The firm scientific answer as of now: maybe . . . Scientists are currently looking into drugs that can delay aging to the same level as diet and exercise without the diet and exercise. They just need to test the in generation upon generation of a species.

And then even once you do age, you’re still vulnerable to a whole host of other diseases, including neurodegenerative disorders. Neurodegenerative disorders, like Alzheimer’s, concerningly continue to evade explanation. While doctors and scientists can find genes that increase the likelihood of developing these diseases, diagnose the, and track their progression, they still lack a clear idea of the mechanisms that cause the disease to occur.

How do scientists approach these questions?

Well, Distinguished Professor Monica Driscoll does so using the C elegan, a species of worms with a similar molecular structure to humans. She has spent over a decade conducting research into diet and aging in C elegans at Rutgers University. She has published papers in any distinguished journals including Nature, been interviewed by The Science Network, and has spoken at conferences across the world.

Amongst Rutgers scientists in the C elegans community, she is known for her experiments with swimming worms, a method through which she exercises worms. She uses these worms as a basis for her experiments with anti-aging and respiratory drugs and has published several papers on this progress.

Most recently she has published two papers, one on February 9 in Nature and another on February 21 in Nature Communication. The first described her lab’s recent discovery of an entirely new molecular mechanism for removal of cellular waste using structures her lab named ‘exophers.’ This discovery is poised to change the way that scientists look at Alzheimer’s. The second paper detailed a long-term collaboration between her lab and two others on the effects of anti-aging drugs and also examining the idea of experiments reproducibility. It not only identified a molecular compound that could be used in medicine, it stands as an example of the way modern technology can increase scientific collaboration.

Driscoll graduated from Rutgers summa cum laude and got her PhD from Harvard. She then completed her post-doctoral fellowship at Columbia University before coming to teach and do research at Rutgers in the early 2000s.

Why tell you this, O Beloved Blogosphere?

Within the first week of March, Professor Driscoll is letting me interview her!

That’s right readers, so keep your eyes peeled and your ears peaked cause that’ll be coming your way soon.