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Cynthia Kenyon(February 21, 1954) is an American molecular biologist and biogerontologist. She is known for her numerous studies of aging. She is also the president of aging research at Calico Research Labs. One other thing that she is known for is being a professor of biophysics and biochemistry at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).

Biography/Career Cynthia Kenyon is 67 years old. Her alma mater was Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is know for her work done on aging. Specifically, she is known for her research on Caenorhabditis elegans. Caenorhabditis elgans are small nematodes that live free in temperate soil environments. One of her awards include the National Academy of Sciences Dan David Prize. A couple more of her awards include the American Association of Medical Colleges Award for Distinguished Research, the Ilse and Helmut Wachter Award for Exceptional Scientific Achievement, the La Fondation IPSEN Prize, and the King Faisal Prize for Medicine. The most recent award she was given was the 2021 Dickson Prize. She received it for her research that has redefined aging. She is also apart of multiple scientific groups. These groups include the following: National Academy of Medicine, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the National Academy of Sciences. She is also the former president of the Genetics Society of America. In 2002, she published her own writing titled, "Rates of Behavior and Aging Specified by Mitochondrial Function During Development". Another part of her life is that she is a cofounder of Elixir Pharmaceuticals. The other cofounder is Leonard Guarente. That is a company that is focused on creating an human anti-aging pill. Along with the anti-aging pill, she is trying to find drugs that can help or allow humans to become disease resistant which would make humans more youthful and healthy. She has a few notable students. Those are Andrew Dillin and Coleen T. Murphy. In 1981, she received her PhD from MIT. The big discovery she had was that a single gene mutation could double the lifespan of healthy round worms. The discovery took place in 1993. What she discovered basically meant that animals, which is tied to humans, contain proteins that affect aging by coordinating different collections of downstream genes that help protect and repair the tissues and cells. She also helped discover multiple longevity genes and pathways. Her own lab was the first to find our that neurons can control the lifespan of an entire animal. This had quite the advancement to science. This is because that this discovery brought about the idea that aging is subject to genetic control. That discovery alone led to the discovery of a universal hormone-signaling pathway that influences the rate of aging in many species, including humans. She faced many problems early in her career because many people believed that aging was just an uncontrollable biological process. Many others did not have the same enthusiasm or interest in what she had to bring to the table, so it was hard for her to find other young scientists to come to here lab and help her. When she made her big discovery in 1993, this sparked the interest of other scientists to study molecular biology of aging. Her discovery helped lead to the realization that a universal endocrine network influences the rate of aging. When it comes to the roundworms that she did her experiment on, she recently changed some of the experiment up and raised the lives of the roundworms sixfold. In these experiments, she would suppress the regulatory gene known as daf-2. This is what would make the worm live longer. Those types of worms typically live about 20 days. She was able to extend the lives of the worms to live up to 125 days. One of the surprising parts of her discovery was that the worms live strong and healthy as they normally would up until they are about to die. She has also tested her experiments on other animals. Those other animals include monkeys, mice, and rats. Another aspect of her life that her discoveries affected her was her own eating habits. In one of her experiments with the roundworms, she discovered that placing sugar on the worms' for, decreased their lifespan. She then used that knowledge to change up her diet. This diet led her to stop eating glycemic index carbohydrates. She then started to eat low carbohydrate foods. To simplify, she does not eat or does not eat a lot of desserts, sweets, potatoes, rice, bread, or pasta. Instead of those foods, she eats or tries to eat green vegetables and fruits that are not sweet. She also said in one of her interviews that she realized that she needed to drink red wine and green tea because it repairs cells. One of her major ideas/theories is that by going through with these experiments on aging, she and other scientists can find the molecules that are responsible for age-related diseases and be able to prevent them from occurring.

References 1. https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/neuroscience/caenorhabditis-elegans 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynthia_Kenyon 3. https://www.broadinstitute.org/bios/cynthia-kenyon 4. https://www.dicksonprize.pitt.edu/recipients/2021-kenyon.php 5. https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/biologist-cynthia-kenyon-on-aging