AREAS OF SPECIALTY:

• Inflammaging

• The Dark Genome

• Cell Senescence

John Sedivy, PhD

John Sedivy is the Hermon C. Bumpus Professor of Biology, and Director of the Center for the Biology of Aging at Brown University. He has a long-standing interest in mammalian genetics, signalling and cell cycle control. He developed one of the first methods for targeted homologous recombination, generating the first viable knockout of c-Myc in rat fibroblast cells, achieving the first homozygous gene knockout (CDKN1A) in primary human cells, which led to the discovery that p21 is a key regulator of entry into cellular senescence, and showing that cellular senescence is regulated in parallel by the p53-p21 and p16-pRb pathways. He works on exploring the involvement of LINE-1 in neurodegenerative diseases and the lifecycles of LINE-1 elements in aging and senescent cells. John’s research has been funded by the NIH for over 30 years, including a MERIT Award from the NIA. He has been a founding member and chair of the NIH CMAD study section, Editor-in-Chief of the journal Aging Cell, chair of the 2015 Gordon Research Conference on the Biology of Aging and is the author of numerous articles.