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What does every single person on the planet have in common?

We all age. And the older we get, the more wrinkles we get, the greyer our hair gets….but more seriously, the higher our risk of getting really nasty things like cancer, heart disease,  Alzheimer’s and diabetes.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could get older, but not get all these age-related problems? I think so! If we are going to be able to make this happen, we need to understand what goes on inside our bodies – inside our organs, tissues and cells – and that’s what I do as a scientist. I try to understand what goes on inside us to make us age.

To do this, I work with tiny nematode worms called C. elegans. Although they obviously look very different from us, they share a lot of our genetic makeup. This means that studying the ageing process in these little worms can tell us a lot about how humans age!