Programme Science without Frontiers - Bolsas pesquisador visitante especial
Unibo Team Leader: Prof. Gastone Castellani, Department of Physics and Astronomy
Aging is a complex and multifactorial process that requires, as such, tools that would enable us to address data collected in high-throughput platforms in order to understand the process
in its layers of interactions. A critical question for the aging studies is to define which are thebiological parameters associated with healthy aging. Several inflammatory degenerative diseases are associated with aging and to understand how to separate healthy from frail aging.
Although some progress on the definition of biological parameters associated with healthy aging have already been made by the group of Bologna (Franceschi et al, 2007, Castellani et al,2010) by integrating an array of data collected from centenarians and elderly in Italy, it is clear that the analysis of populations with distinct genetic background and environmental nfluences will improve our knowledge on the determinants of healthy aging.
This project has three aims:
- To start a collaboration between groups of bioinformatics and systems biology in Brazil and Bologna (Italy). For the Brazilian partners, such collaboration will be of great interest since our expertise in the field is still initial and the group of scientists at Luigi Galvani Center in Bologna has already a history of multidisciplinary research towards an integrated understanding of complex phenomena such as aging.
To help building an ongoing collaborative project on the comparative study of healthy aging between Brazil and Italy. This project received the approval of the Ethical Committee of Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais and sample collection from elderly already started.
- To link research and training. The methodology showed in the Aim 1 will be used to set up a course in Brazil where one of the main objectives will be to learn how to deal with real experimental data.
Brasilian Coordinator: José Carlos Merino Mombach,Department of Physics Universidade Federal de Santa Maria
Other Participants
1) University of Bologna:
Department of Physics and Astonomy;
Department of Specialized, Experimental and Diagnostic Medicine;
the Galvani Interdipartimental Center for Biophysics, Bioinformathics and Biocomplexity
2) Universidade Federal de Santa Maria
3) Universidade Federal do Pampa (Unipampa), São Gabriel
4) Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG)
5) Centro de Pesquisas Rene Rachou (FIOCRUZ-BH)
6) Universidade do Vale do Rio Doce (UNIVALE)