Welcome
A desire to last is part of our nature. The life expectancy in the Western countries has been constantly increasing over the last two centuries at the average rate of 1,7 years for each decade. Today the average lifespan of people in Western countries is around 80 years. This means that today’s men and women are suffering from age-related diseases due to the significant number of years they have already lived. Can we not only add years to life, but also life to years i.e. increase the quality of life in old age? Understanding basic processes behind some of the age-related diseases could help to alleviate the consequences of the process of aging. This is one of the most important questions aging societies of today have to face. This question provokes a lot of others: How do cells age? How is the process of aging regulated in the complex network of cells? What causes diseases associated with aging?
What is aging and how can the process be understood?
Aging is certainly congenitally determined and most likely dependent on multiple genes. There are strong evolutionary arguments why aging is not programmed, like development, but is rather caused by an inevitable decline in cellular repair and maintenance functions accompanied by stochastic accumulation of damage and decline in function.
To bring together leading experts in the field, to discuss the open questions and to help junior scientists enter the field are the main aims of the upcoming Mosbacher Kolloquium in April 2010. The meetings headline is “The Biology of Aging: Mechanisms and Intervention”.
It is a long lasting tradition that the German Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (GBM) is organizing its spring meeting in the picturesque town of Mosbach in Baden/Germany. For the event in 2010, they accepted the “Cologne Excellence Cluster on Cellular Stress Responses in Aging-associated diseases (CECAD Cologne)” as a partner.
We are glad to welcome you in Mosbach and are looking forward to an interesting meeting.
Aleksandra Trifunovic
Thomas Langer
Jens Brüning