SUMMARY: Primary Cells, Tissues, and Animals Core (Core B) is responsible for providing investigators of the Program Project (PPG) with animal models, tissues, and primary cells necessary to achieve their specific aims. Experiments of this PPG focus on identifying mechanisms responsible for the differences in longevity and Alzheimer’s disease susceptibility between species of mammals. Mammals offer a unique opportunity for comparative studies of longevity because of the over 100-fold differences in lifespans between species. For example, short-lived mammals, such as shrews, live a maximum 2 years, while long-lived mammals, such as Bowhead whales have maximum lifespans over 200 years. To enable the study of molecular mechanisms of longevity in these animals, it is essential to provide access to biological materials from multiple mammalian species. Core B maintains and replenishes, as needed, the collection of tissues and primary cells from 58 species of mammals. The Core provides project investigators with tissues, cells, DNA and RNA. In addition, Core B maintains aging colonies of mice, naked mole rats, Damaraland mole rat, degu, and African spiny mice for the use by project investigators and will perform stress treatments on these animals as required for the projects. Core B will monitor and identify degus with cognitive impairment as part of pre-screening them for molecular studies of Alzheimer’s disease pathology by the Projects. Considering the effort needed to collect and establish cell cultures from non-standard organisms that are not commercially available, this centralized resource saves time and effort, and reduces costs. Core B will also maintain and breed mouse models with interventions engineered based on the longevity mechanisms discovered by project investigators in long-lived mammalian species. This includes mice overexpressing human, beaver, and Bowhead whale versions of SIRT6, bowhead whale CIRBP, naked mole rat hyaluronan synthase 2 gene (nmrHAS2 mice), and mice treated with hyaluronidase inhibitors or inhibitors of epigenetic enzymes. These mouse models will also be bred to Alzheimer's disease mouse models MAPT and 5xFAD. Core B will perform longevity studies with these mice and analyze the effect of interventions on health and Alzheimer’s disease pathology. Maintaining the centralized collection standardizes culture conditions, quality control and biological samples for use across PPG projects, improves reproducibility of results, and allows analysis of the same individual animals by several assays and projects to minimize animal use.