New approaches to an age-old problem

•Ageing is a complex process.•Ageing studies are traditionally not amenable to systems biology approaches.•New high-throughput methods have recently been developed to track and purify old cells.•System biology approaches combined with new methods in ageing research are powerful tools to understand in more details the ageing process.

Progress in the last decades indicated that ageing might be a universal fact of life. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying this process remain a major challenge in biology. Our relatively long life span and huge variations in lifestyle make detailed studies of ageing in humans difficult to interpret. In contrast, the relatively simple yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae (budding yeast) has been a critical model in the field of ageing research for decades. Systems biology has contributed to the ageing field by mapping complex regulatory networks and resolving the dynamics of signal transduction pathways. In this review we first review the current understanding of ageing in yeast, then highlight the recent high-throughput systems and system biology approaches that could be used to further our understanding of ageing in yeast.

Graphical abstractFigure optionsDownload full-size imageDownload high-quality image (95 K)Download as PowerPoint slide