Grant: Project Grant

Canadians benefit from long average lifespans but often suffer with illness in their last years. We aim to make the health span of aging Canadians the same length as their lifespan. One way that health span can be affected is through motor coordination which declines as we age. This can lead to falls that have a devastating impact on quality of life and reduce health span. Thus, an important field of study in aging is to understand how motor coordination is controlled across our lifespan. Rhomboid-3 is a protein whose expression in the brain increases as we age. To understand how Rhomboid-3 impacts aging-related motor coordination, we use model systems that have been engineered to lack Rhomboid-3. These animal develop and behave normally. However, their motor coordination remains high, even when they age. This suggests that Rhomboid-3 contributes to the progressive impairment of motor coordination that normally occurs as we age. Here we aim to study Rhomboid-3 further to explore how it functions in the aging brain. We are a team of researchers with complementary strengths which allows us to study this question using a number of different research approaches which strengthens our results. Our long-term goal is to identify targets that we could drug that would lead to an improvement in the health span of aging Canadians.