Aging - Pushing the Limits of Cellular Quality Control (A5)

Aging is one of the highest risk factors known for most diseases of the modern era of humanity. Such age-related diseases are linked to the loss of performance of a large variety of homeostatic processes protecting the genome, proteome, lipidome, or metabolome. One of the greatest challenges facing any organism is to coordinate the operation and maintenance of these different homeostatic processes and, in multicellular organisms, also to harmonize these functions across all cells and tissues. However, the highly interconnected nature of homeostatic machineries makes the system vulnerable to perturbations as the breakdown of one specific homeostatic process during aging or stress brings forth repercussions on other maintenance activities. In addition, as each cell or tissue must remain aware of the performance and well being of distal cells and organelles, a breakdown in cell-to-cell and organelle-to-organelle communication can lead to critical macromolecular perturbations, including a loss of genome, proteome, lipidome, metabolome, and endocrine functions leading to the inception of age-related disorders. The goal of this meeting is to bridge interdisciplinary approaches studying different aspects of cellular quality control and homeostasis with research on the aging soma and germline. We believe that deciphering the mechanisms of homeostatic control, its interconnective nature, and homeostatic communication between cells and organelles may lead to a deeper understanding of the aging process - its onset, sequence of events, and critical targets.