Chris Patil
researcher, Buck Institute for Age Research

I am a biogerontologist (a molecular and cellular biologist of aging) currently working to understand the changes in gene expression that occur during cellular senescence, a fundamental aspect of the aging process in mammals.

My past training is in studies of cellular stress; as a graduate student, I was an early adopter of microarray expression profiling technology. My thesis project combined microarray technology with classical genetic analysis and computational modeling to allow a study of cellular stress responses at the whole-genome scale.

I try to bring an open, collaborative and interdisciplinary perspective to my experimental work. I’m particularly excited about a new multi-institute collaborative project that will test dozens of hypotheses about the mechanisms of aging in dozens of different species, in parallel.

When I’m not working at the bench, I write about recent developments in biogerontology at my weblog, Ouroboros: Research in the biology of aging .