João Pedro de Magalhães - Computational biology approaches for research on ageing

About the speaker

Professor de Magalhaes graduated in Microbiology in 1999 from the Escola Superior de Biotecnologia in his hometown of Porto, Portugal, and then obtained his PhD in 2004 from the University of Namur in Belgium. Following a postdoc with genomics pioneer Prof George Church at Harvard Medical School, in 2008 Prof de Magalhaes was recruited to the University of Liverpool. He now leads the Integrative Genomics of Ageing Group (http://pcwww.liv.ac.uk/~aging/) which focuses on understanding the genetic, cellular, and molecular mechanisms of ageing. Prof de Magalhaes has authored over 100 publications and given over 100 invited talks, including three TEDx talks. He is also Chief Scientific Officer of Swiss-based biotech Centaura (https://centaura.com/).

Abstract

Ageing has a profound impact on human society and modern medicine, yet it remains a major puzzle of biology. Considerable progress has been made in model organisms with several genes shown to regulate ageing. It is now necessary, however, to investigate how these genes work as an aggregate to modulate the ageing process. In this talk, I will present our network and systems biology studies of ageing. We also applied computational and integrative methods to dietary and pharmacological manipulations of ageing, revealing new life-extending drugs. Lastly, I will present and discuss how we have been using machine learning to study ageing and age-related diseases.