Bakar Aging Research Institute

BARI spotlight: Guo Huang and team show mitochondria can shape the heart through signaling, not just ATP. Coq10a keeps coenzyme Q properly distributed, without it, postnatal hearts grow too large via PPAR pathways. #mitochondria #cardiology www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

BARI’s Aric Prather and colleagues ran a pilot trial of lemborexant for daytime sleep in night-shift workers. No clear win vs. placebo overall, but the 10mg dose showed a hint of benefit. Useful pilot data for a tough problem. #sleep #circadian link.springer.com/article/10.1...

BARI’s Daniel Mordes and Julie Smeyers unpack how low TBK1 raises risk for ALS and related dementias. Cells can’t clear junk as well, and the brain’s immune cells get out of balance. Helpful look at a dual problem. #ALS #dementia www.frontiersin.org/journals/neu...

BARI spotlight: Hanna Marten’s review traces how matrix crosslinking, weak adhesions, and nuclear fragility feed senescence, and how that loop further degrades tissue mechanics. A clear case for resetting the aged mechanical niche. #aging #ECM journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/...

BARI spotlight: Margaret Wallhagen co-authors a Nursing Outlook piece on why geroscience is richer with nurses as the table. Trusted messengers. Holistic care. A life-course view of aging. #nursing #geroscience www.nursingoutlook.org/article/S002...

Scott Bauer and colleagues show that older adults report more urinary symptoms when slow walking takes a bigger part of their energy capacity, pointing to a possible shared pathway with mobility decline. link.springer.com/article/10.1... #aging #geriatrics

New protocol from BARI’s Andrew Yang: isolate cerebral vessels, then pull high-purity nuclei for multi-omics. Blood-brain barrier cells are usually undercounted, this gives labs a clearer look at them. #neuroscience www.nature.com/articles/s41...

This week is Postdoc Appreciation Week and we’re grateful for the BARI postdocs who keep our science moving! You bring the experiments, the ideas, the late nights, and the questions that push aging biology forward. Thank you for being such a vital part of this community!

BARI spotlight: Kevan Shokat maps adaptive cell-cycle control in cancer and the emerging toolkit for CDK2 targeting. Useful reading for anyone thinking about kinase drugs after CDK4/6. #cancer www.nature.com/articles/s41...

BARI’s Isha Jain maps the surprising diversity of terminal electron acceptors across eukaryotes. Oxygen isn’t the only destination, and those anaerobic backups still matter in low-oxygen tissues and disease. www.cell.com/action/showP...

BARI spotlight: Martin Kampmann’s group used genome-wide CRISPRi to find regulators of the interferon-responsive microglial state. Known interferon genes plus unexpected hits. A toolkit for asking when this program helps or harms the aging brain. #Microglia #aging bit.ly/4reK3az

BARI’s Katrina Abuabara & team find higher estimated salt intake is associated with more IL-17-related inflammatory disease in ~470,000 UK Biobank participants, especially skin and joint conditions. Worth asking whether cutting salt could help. www.clinicalnutritionespen.com/article/S240...

Cool story from one of BARI’s newest members, Jason Gestwicki. Tau fibrils formed without cofactors are dynamic, and evolve over weeks unless agitation or polyanions stabilize them. A fresh look at how disease-specific tau folds may mature. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

New BARI member Marina Sirota and colleagues used computational drug repurposing to identify simvastatin and primaquine as candidates for endometriosis. Both eased pain behaviors in rats, simvastatin was also linked to lower disease risk in patient records. www.cell.com/action/showP...

New BARI member Reza Abbasi-Asl & colleagues find that daily step patterns, especially mid-day activity, reflect disability in progressive MS and can complement traditional clinic tests. Great use of wearable data! #MSResearch #wearables journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

BARI spotlight: Jeanne Paz & colleagues report a new focal ischemic model of thalamic stroke that produces persistent spontaneous pain-like behavior in mice, closer to what many stroke survivors actually experience. An important new tool. #stroke #painresearch www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

BARI’s community just got stronger. Please join us in welcoming our newest members. Their work ranges from how the brain and immune system change with age to the molecular and computational tools that will help us understand those changes. Meet the new members: geroscience.ucsf.edu/news/new-mem...

Job alert from BARI! Seeking a passionate, highly motivated person to lead community building across our aging biology network. If you love connecting people and advancing the science of aging, this could be your role! Know someone perfect? Share or apply here: careers.ucsf.edu/careers/JobD...

BARI spotlight: Dengke Ma and team reveal that rhythmic proton/ionic stress in the intestine coincides with (and can drive) developmental sleep in C. elegans. Their new GENTIS sensor makes these dynamics visible in real time. #neuroscience #sleepscience www.science.org/doi/epdf/10....

BARI spotlight: Aric Prather & team find that racial differences in non-REM sleep (especially reduced deep-sleep delta power) contribute to memory differences overnight. Sleep may be a critical pathway for supporting cognitive resilience! www.ovid.com/jnls/bsam/fu...