Published in Annual Review of Physiology
Cerebral small vessel disease (SVD) is characterized by changes in the pial and parenchymal microcirculations. SVD produces reductions in cerebral blood flow and impaired blood-brain barrier function, which are leading contributors to age-related reductions in brain health. End-organ effects are diverse, resulting in both cognitive and noncognitive...
Published in Annual Review of Physiology
A progressive decline in maximum heart rate (mHR) is a fundamental aspect of aging in humans and other mammals. This decrease in mHR is independent of gender, fitness, and lifestyle, affecting in equal measure women and men, athletes and couch potatoes, spinach eaters and fast food enthusiasts. Importantly, the decline in mHR is the major determina...
Published in Annual Review of Physiology
Genetic variants in the APOL1 gene, found only in individuals of recent African ancestry, greatly increase risk of multiple types of kidney disease. These APOL1 kidney risk alleles are a rare example of genetic variants that are common but also have a powerful effect on disease susceptibility. These alleles rose to high frequency in sub-Saharan Afr...
Published in Annual Review of Physiology
Circadian rhythms are daily cycles in biological function that are ubiquitous in nature. Understood as a means for organisms to anticipate daily environmental changes, circadian rhythms are also important for orchestrating complex biological processes such as immunity. Nowhere is this more evident than in the respiratory system, where circadian rhy...
Published in Annual Review of Physiology
Endocrine disrupting chemicals are common in our environment and act on hormone systems and signaling pathways to alter physiological homeostasis. Gestational exposure can disrupt developmental programs, permanently altering tissues with impacts lasting into adulthood. The brain is a critical target for developmental endocrine disruption, resulting...
Published in Annual Review of Physiology
On Earth, all life is exposed to dramatic changes in the environment over the course of the day; consequently, organisms have evolved strategies to both adapt to and anticipate these 24-h oscillations. As a result, time of day is a major regulator of mammalian physiology and processes, including transcription, signaling, metabolism, and muscle cont...
Published in Annual Review of Physiology
People worldwide are living longer, and it is estimated that by 2050, the proportion of the world's population over 60 years of age will nearly double. Natural lung aging is associated with molecular and physiological changes that cause alterations in lung function, diminished pulmonary remodeling and regenerative capacity, and increased susceptibi...
Published in Annual Review of Physiology
Acidic metabolic waste products accumulate in the tumor microenvironment because of high metabolic activity and insufficient perfusion. In tumors, the acidity of the interstitial space and the relatively well-maintained intracellular pH influence cancer and stromal cell function, their mutual interplay, and their interactions with the extracellular...
Published in Annual Review of Physiology
In mammals, most cardiomyocytes (CMs) become polyploid (they have more than two complete sets of chromosomes). The purpose of this review is to evaluate assumptions about CM ploidy that are commonly discussed, even if not experimentally demonstrated, and to highlight key issues that are still to be resolved. Topics discussed here include (a) techni...
Published in Annual Review of Physiology
Autophagy is a cellular homeostatic program for the turnover of cellular organelles and proteins, in which double-membraned vesicles (autophagosomes) sequester cytoplasmic cargos, which are subsequently delivered to the lysosome for degradation. Emerging evidence implicates autophagy as an important modulator of human disease. Macroautophagy and se...
