(New York/Vienna, 19-04-2023) Markus Schosserer, Research Group Leader at MedUni Vienna's Institute of Medical Genetics, receives an extensive research grant from the American Federation for Aging Research and the Hevolution Foundation for a project investigating ageing processes.
The American Federation for Aging Research (AFAR) and the Hevolution Foundation are presenting the Hevolution/AFAR New Investigator Awards in Aging Biology and Geroscience Research for the first time. The awards, eighteen three-year research grants of $375,000 each, will be awarded to support research projects in the field of geroscience, an area of research that examines the biology of ageing and age-related diseases to promote a healthy lifespan.
Project "Targeting the epitranscriptomes to promote healthy lifespan"
The constantly increasing life expectancy with a simultaneously stagnating health span (lifespan without diseases) is one of the greatest challenges of our society. The production of new proteins changes with age, loses efficiency and becomes less precise. Different types of RNA molecules play an important role in this process. On one hand, they contain the information required for the composition of the produced proteins and on the other, they are themselves important building blocks of the molecular machines that carry out protein synthesis. RNA molecules are decorated with hundreds of different chemical modifications that can influence this process but are still insufficiently understood.
In this study, Markus Schosserer and his colleagues want to use direct sequencing of individual RNA molecules through nanopores to investigate how the chemical modification patterns vary during ageing in nematodes, human kidney cells and mice. The researchers also attempt to specifically alter individual modifications using genetic methods and subsequently test whether they can extend the health span of nematodes or increase the stress resistance of human kidney cells. If successful, RNA modifications could reveal new biomarkers for the ageing process and potential targets for drugs.
About the person
Markus Schosserer studied food sciences and biotechnology at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna (BOKU), where he also completed his doctorate in biotechnology. He led a research group at the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology at BOKU Vienna before moving to MedUni Vienna, where he has led a research team at the Center for Pathobiochemistry and Genetics at the Institute of Medical Genetics since 2022. His research group is also involved in the Christian Doppler Laboratory "SKINMAGINE" (Multimodal Imaging of Aging and Senescence of the Skin), which is operated jointly with the Department of Dermatology at MedUni Vienna, the University of Technology Vienna and CHANEL Research. He is a member of the editorial boards of several specialist journals.