My goal is to understand some basic biological changes involved in aging.  Though we know what genes may be manipulated to extend or shorten lifespan (i.e. daf-2, daf-16, age-1), we do not understand the downstream biological processes affected by our manipulations.  It is my hope that by studying metabolic profiles in a collaboration with Dr. Michael Shapiro (link to his website) I may be able to ascertain principally affected biological pathways in C. elegans mutants.