Dr. Laura Corrales-Diaz Pomatto
Abstract
Across species, females typically outlive their male counterparts. In humans, women in the US have an average life expectancy of 81.3 years, which is approximately 5 years longer than US men. This disparity in lifespan between the sexes is an intriguing age-centric question. Fruit flies are a fantastic model organism to facilitate our understanding of the sexual differences (sexual dimorphism) that are observed in lifespan. For scientists, fruit flies are an inexpensive genetic model that is easy to manipulate, comprises both sexes, and has a relatively short lifespan (approximately 90 days). Most importantly, fruit flies have many of the key genetic pathways that are shared with humans.
This talk will highlight the benefits of fruit flies in longevity research and will introduce a method that researchers use to genetically modify fruit flies into the opposite sex, thereby creating pseudo-females that are chromosomally male, but physically look like females. These pseudo-females enable researchers to ask intriguing questions about differences in molecular stress response and how these pathways are potentially different between males and females.
Speaker Bio
Dr. Laura Corrales-Diaz Pomatto is the first recipient of the Biology of Aging Doctorate from the USC Davis School of Gerontology and the premier aging research center, the Buck Institute. Laura has achieved various awards and fellowships throughout her graduate tenure, including the prestigious National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship and the USC Graduate Provost Fellowship. Laura’s primary interest in her doctoral studies is understanding why an organism loses its ability to cope with oxidative stress during aging. Currently, she seeks means of understanding ways to restore the adaptive response with age. As an undergraduate at USC, Laura obtained a double major in Biomedical Engineering and Gerontology, was a Presidential Scholar and a Four-Year Varsity Student-Athlete on the Women’s Rowing Team.