[
Science,
2002]
How much you eat, not what you eat, seems to make a difference in the aging process. It is well established that reduced calorie consumption robustly extends adult life expectancy in a variety of animal models. Now, on page 120 of this issue, Larsen and Clarke show that diet quality also affects aging. In the worm Caenorhabditis elegans, reduced consumption of coenzyme Q (Q) dramatically extends longevity.
[
Worm,
2016]
The hypoxic response is a well-studied and highly conserved biological response to low oxygen availability. First described more than 20 y ago, the traditional model for this response is that declining oxygen levels lead to stabilization of hypoxia-inducible transcription factors (HIFs), which then bind to hypoxia responsive elements (HREs) in target genes to mediate the transcriptional changes collectively known as the hypoxic response.(1,2) Recent work in C. elegans has forced a re-evaluation of this model by indicating that the worm HIF (HIF-1) can mediate effects in a cell non-autonomous fashion and, in at least one case, increase expression of an intestinal hypoxic response target gene in cells lacking HIF-1.