#1

If you hang out at longevity and aging start-ups, you are sure to run into people who have studied under Vadim Gladyshev, a professor of medicine at Harvard University. Few labs have been raided harder in recent years than Gladyshev’s and with good reason.

He’s spent decades doing no-nonsense, pioneering work in aging science, and he’s ever sober and realistic about the field.

One of my favorite results to come out of Gladyshev’s lab was a 2021 paper analyzing the “rejuvenation event” that happens in the womb when an embryo does away with the aging baggage accumulated by its parents. We’d long assumed that something like this must happen to give an embryo a fresh, genetic start in life, but Gladyshev and his team were able to home in on the mechanisms. (Thanks to Alex Trapp, the brilliant former student of Gladyshev, for pointing me to this result.)

Recently, I had a chance to sit down with Gladyshev and discuss this paper, his work and the aging field. Enjoy, aging nerds. Enjoy.

9 Likes
#2

Great artcle! I had never cosidered the stuff he brings up about rejuvenation during early embryogenesis, but it makes sense. At some point an embryo has to transform from “an extension of the parent’s older cells” to “new, separate, younger cells.”

3 Likes
#3

image
image825×381 58.8 KB

#4

I dont think the methylation changes indicate rejuvenation.

1 Like
#5

And copy errors on the germline, combined in the zygote, how could they possibly be “rejuvenated”, compared to what, after three weeks? He seems to feel some magic about some technicality, leaves it obscure, at least in this interview, and instead of clarifying gives it a likely rather misleading name, “rejuvenation”.