Cynthia Kenyon

Impact

Cynthia Kenyon is a molecular geneticist whose work in the roundworm C. elegans helped establish that the rate of aging is under genetic control. In 1993 her laboratory reported that changing a single gene could double the lifespan of healthy, fertile worms, a finding that prompted intensive study of the molecular biology of aging. Her work showed that animals contain genetic programs that influence aging by coordinating downstream genes that protect and repair cells and tissues, and contributed to recognition that a conserved hormone-signalling pathway influences the rate of aging across species, including mammals. After a PhD at MIT and postdoctoral work with Sydney Brenner in Cambridge, England, she joined the UCSF faculty in 1986, becoming Herb Boyer Distinguished Professor and an American Cancer Society Professor. In 2014 she joined Calico Life Sciences, where she is Vice President, Aging Research. She is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a former president of the Genetics Society of America.

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Research output

216 works · 40,225 citations · h-index 80 OpenAlex ↗

Selected publications

• A C. elegans mutant that lives twice as long as wild type ↗ 1993 · 3,497 citations
• The genetics of ageing ↗ 2010 · 2,779 citations
• Genes that act downstream of DAF-16 to influence the lifespan of Caenorhabditis elegans ↗ 2003 · 2,325 citations
• Regulation of Aging and Age-Related Disease by DAF-16 and Heat-Shock Factor ↗ 2003 · 1,539 citations
• daf-16 : An HNF-3/forkhead Family Member That Can Function to Double the Life-Span of Caenorhabditis elegans ↗ 1997 · 1,531 citations

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