Arjumand Ghazi, PhD is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Pediatrics, Developmental Biology and Cell Biology & Physiology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Arjumand studied Drosophila muscle development as a graduate student while at the NCBS, TIFR, India. A chance encounter with the worm (and some cool aging biologists) got her interested in the fountain of youth. She did her post-doctoral work on the genetics of aging at the University of California, San Francisco. Her lab identifies and studies genes that determine the length of life and quality of aging using the model C.elegans. Research in her laboratory is supported by the National Institutes on Aging (NIA/NIH) and the Global Consortium for Reproductive Longevity & Equity (GCRLE).
One of the major foci of the Ghazi lab’s research is the relationship between reproduction and aging. It is a well-known fact that increasing age reduces reproductive capacity, but there is now strong evidence that the health status and rate of aging of the reproductive system strongly influence the aging of the whole organism. We study genes that link reproductive health with lifespan and aspects of aging-related healthspan features such as immunity, mobility and neurodegeneration.
The lab has identified novel mechanisms by which animals retain metabolic homeostasis and longevity in the face of reproductive perturbations. These physiological alterations are brought about by a group of conserved pro-longevity transcription factors- TCER-1, NHR-49 and DAF-16 (Ratnappan et al., 2014, PLoS Gen.; Amrit et al., 2016 PLoS Gen.). In a surprising and influential discovery, the lab demonstrated that TCER-1, that functions a longevity-enhancing factor in fact represses immunity, and appears to do so to divert resources towards reproductive fitness (Amrit et al., Nature Comm. 2019). These discoveries, and our studies on NHR-49 (Naim et al., Aging Cell, 2021) have created avenues to dissect the mechanisms linking fertility, lifespan and healthspan. TCER-1 is homologous to the human transcription elongation and splicing factor, TCERG1. Our preliminary studies have found that TCER-1 regulates the alternative splicing of germline genes with potential roles in reproductive aging. This is a truly exciting discovery because it has opened up avenues to study a role for mRNA splicing, an emerging hallmark of somatic aging, in determining the rate of reproductive aging.
Lab Website: http://www.chp.edu/CHP/ghazilab