Research
Mixed
Constitutive responses to stress and DNA damage, including upregulation of heat shock proteins and proteases, are observed with age in Drosophila and worms, representing a conserved transcriptomic response to cellular damage.
In flies and worms, aging is associated with an upregulation of stress response genes like heat shock proteins. This suggests an attempt by the cell to cope with accumulated damage, although this pattern is less clear in mammals.
ModerateSupportsMEDIUM confidence
Much better evidence comes from D. melanogaster, where remarkable similarities have been noted between gene expression changes that occur during ageing and those that result from oxidative stress or hypoxia
Why this rating
Strong in flies/worms, but mammalian data is confounded by inflammation overlap.
Source
Gene expression hallmarks of cellular ageing
Stephen Frenk et al. · Biogerontology · 2018
DOI 10.1007/s10522-018-9750-z
narrative_reviewCited 198×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
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