Cynthia Kenyon
Showed in 1993 that a single-gene change doubles the lifespan of the worm C. elegans, which opened the study of nutrient-sensing pathways as ageing pathways
Vice President, Aging Research, Calico (since 2014) · Herb Boyer Distinguished Professor and American Cancer Society Professor, University of California San Francisco (faculty from 1986) · PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology · postdoctoral research with Sydney Brenner, Cambridge · member of the US National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Medicine
Calico Life Sciences (South San Francisco, California, USA) ↗ ORCID0000-0003-3446-2636 ↗
Portrait: Academy of Geroscience
Before 1993 ageing was widely treated as accumulated wear; the age-1 mutant described by Friedman and Johnson in 1988 was an early sign that a single gene could change it. Kenyon's discovery that a mutation in daf-2 doubles the lifespan of healthy, fertile C. elegans — and that the effect requires DAF-16 — reframed it as a regulated process. Every nutrient-sensing arm in this Atlas inherits that reframing, including the TOR arm.
She is senior author of HAN2008 here, the paper from her UCSF laboratory that tied autophagy to the lifespan effect of dietary restriction and TOR inhibition. It is a good example of her laboratory's habit of asking which steps are actually required rather than which correlate.
Since 2014 she has led ageing research at Calico. The Atlas cites her for the worm genetics, not for any human claim.
Milestones in the Atlas
| Year | Evidence | Study |
|---|---|---|
| 2008 | A | A role for autophagy in the extension of lifespan by dietary restriction in C. elegans HAN2008 Senior author: autophagy genes are required for dietary restriction and TOR inhibition to extend lifespan in C. elegans. |
Co-authors in the Atlas
People with a profile here who share at least one study with Cynthia Kenyon.
- Malene Hansen Showed in worms, alongside a 2007 report from Beth Levine's laboratory, that autophagy is required for dietary restriction to extend lifespan