# Exploring the cellular mechanisms of enhanced lifespan in bats

> **NIH NIH R21** · UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES · 2023 · $196,750

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT
Human aging is characterized by dynamic changes in biological and physiological processes that negatively
impact health and quality of life. Given the rapidly aging human population, characterizing and mitigating
these negative impacts is an increasingly urgent goal of biology. Progress toward this goal has been hampered
by the fact that commonly used, shorter-lived lab animals (e.g., mouse) make less than ideal tools with which
to identify the processes that drive longevity in longer-lived mammals, including humans. Bats, in contrast,
provide an excellent study system for mammalian longevity. Bats are the longest-lived mammals relative to
their body size and extreme longevity evolved at least four times in the clade. Many bats also maintain their
health during their long lifespan; for example, bats display extended fertility and rarely if ever get cancer.
Despite the numerous advantages of the group, the cellular processes by which most bats achieve their
striking longevity remain largely unknown. This oversight has been driven, in part, by the inability of
researchers to accurately estimate the chronological age of wild bats, given many bats’ lack of obvious signs of
biological aging. As a result, studies of bat aging have been mostly limited to the few species for which captive
or “mark and recapture” colonies have been maintained for decades, and in which tissue collection is
necessarily minimal. This project takes advantage of a newly developed, methylation-based method that
reliably estimates chronological age across mammals, including wild bats, to overcome this obstacle. This new
method will be coupled with field- and lab- work on several clades of wild bats to establish wild bats as a
powerful model for cellular-level aging in long-lived mammals, such as humans, and use this model to begin
to identify cellular processes that drive longevity and mitigate aging-related morbidity. Preliminary data
suggest that bats minimize DNA damage and cellular-level aging through several cellular processes, and that
the specific processes involved likely vary from bat to bat. Each additional bat sampled therefore has the
potential to yield novel and informative results. This project will achieve its goals through completion of two
specific aims. Aim 1 is to characterize and compare the relationship between aging-related, cellular processes
and chronological age in the tissues of wild bats from twelve diverse species from the Family Phyllostomidae,
including longer and shorter -lived representatives. Aim 2 is to functionally manipulate and characterize
aging-relevant cellular processes such as oxidative stress, DNA damage, and senescence (among others) using
standard mammalian cell culture methods on primary and iPSC cells from diverse bat species, including those
characterized for Aim 1. Through completion of these aims, the project is expected to identify cellular
processes that are associated with longevity in wild bats and ca...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10672324
- **Project number:** 5R21AG078784-02
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES
- **Principal Investigator:** Vincent J. Lynch
- **Activity code:** R21 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2023
- **Award amount:** $196,750
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2022-08-01 → 2025-04-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10672324

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10672324, Exploring the cellular mechanisms of enhanced lifespan in bats (5R21AG078784-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10672324. Licensed CC0.

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