J. Julie Wu

Researcher in Toren Finkel's laboratory at the US National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute and first author of the 2013 study showing that mice making only a quarter of the normal amount of mTOR live about 20 percent longer

Center for Molecular Medicine, National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, NIH (Toren Finkel lab, papers 2009–2013, at the time of the study)

Rapamycin lengthens the life of mice, but a drug can have side effects that muddy the picture. In the Atlas study WUX2013, Wu and colleagues in Toren Finkel's lab at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute took a genetic route instead. They bred mice that make only about 25 percent of the normal amount of mTOR protein. These mice lived about 20 percent longer on average: median lifespan was 28.0 versus 22.9 months in males and 31.5 versus 26.5 months in females.

The slowing of ageing was uneven, which is why the paper calls it segmental and tissue-specific. The mTOR-reduced mice kept better memory and balance in old age, but they lost more bone and were more prone to infection. For the Atlas this is a clean mouse experiment showing that turning mTOR down, not off, can extend life, and that the benefit does not reach every organ.

PubMed lists Wu on several papers with Finkel between 2009 and 2013, including work on Wnt signalling and liver glucose metabolism, and on two studies with Elizabeth Henske's group at Brigham and Women's Hospital on autophagy in tuberous sclerosis complex, a disease in which mTORC1 is overactive. Wu's current position could not be confirmed, so the affiliation shown is the one on the Atlas paper.

Milestones in the Atlas

A selection, not a full bibliography: only papers that meet the Atlas inclusion criteria.

Co-authors in the Atlas 1

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