At the 52nd annual meeting of the American ageing Association (AGE) in Madison, Wisconsin, Matt met Berenice Benayoun, an Associate Professor at USC's Leonard Davis School of Gerontology, who delivered the keynote speech and received the 2024 Vincent Cristofalo Rising Star Award. They discussed her research on genomic regulation, environmental stimuli, and biological sex's impact on ageing, as well as topics like ovaries and ageing, hormone replacement therapy, and the African turquoise killifish as a new model for longevity research. They also touched on recent podcast questions about pregnancy's effects on ageing and sex-specific differences in estradiol's impact on mice.

Key Points:

The podcast explores the role of ovarian ageing, sex differences, and estrogen in ageing, while introducing the African turquoise killifish as a promising model for studying transposons and age-related processes.

• Ovarian ageing: The podcast discusses how ovarian ageing is now recognized as one of the earliest functional declines in normal ageing, with significant impacts on brain and cardiovascular health.
• Sex Differences in ageing: Research presented shows that ageing affects male and female immune cells differently, with female cells experiencing a specific decline in functions like phagocytosis and metabolic regulation.
• Estrogen's Role in ageing: The conversation highlights the anti-ageing effects of estrogen in women, emphasizing that early menopause can predict longevity and discussing the benefits of hormone replacement therapy.
• Epigenetic Clocks and Pregnancy: The podcast touches on the idea that pregnancy can accelerate epigenetic ageing, but some women may revert post-pregnancy, which opens up new avenues for research.
• Killifish as a Model for ageing: The African turquoise killifish is introduced as a new model organism for ageing research due to its short lifespan and vertebrate biology, making it a promising tool for studying age-related processes.
• Transposons and Ageing: The role of transposable elements (transposons) in ageing is explored, with the killifish model being used to investigate whether the deregulation of these elements could drive ageing processes.