Why Aging May Be a Program, Not a Breakdown | Quanta Magazine
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Why Aging May Be a Program, Not a Breakdown
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Why Aging May Be a Program, Not a Breakdown
By
Ingrid Wickelgren
August 14, 2026
By deciphering the molecular signatures of millions of mouse cells, Junyue Cao has found that aging is not haphazard wear and tear but rather a “remodeling of the cell society.”
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Junyue Cao, a cell biologist at Rockefeller University in New York City, analyzed gene expression in millions of mouse cells from different life stages. He was surprised to find that “changes in aging are not universal across all the cells,” he said.
Karen Dias for Quanta Magazine
Introduction
By Ingrid Wickelgren
Contributing Writer
August 14, 2026
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aging
animals
biology
cell biology
cells
developmental biology
epigenetics
gene expression
genomics
proteins
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In some ways, we know aging when we see it, from the graying of hair to the wrinkling of skin to declines in motor, sensory, and cognitive capacities. Yet the underlying biology of aging remains a matter of uncertainty and debate. Many lines of research align with the theory that aging is a direct result of decay — the inevitable degradation of molecules (including proteins or DNA), organelles, cells, or whole organs — from external assault or inexorable breakdown. When the body’s repair mechanisms fail to keep pace with these changes, like a factory with deteriorating equipment and too few mechanics, it manifests as the known signs of aging and, eventually, death.
The idea makes a lot of sense, but according to the cell biologist Junyue Cao, it’s inaccurate. Far from a random but linear process of wear and tear, he argues, aging is a stepwise, programmed, orderly affair. “The destruction of the system is programmed at a very early stage,” said Cao, who heads the Laboratory of Single-Cell Genomics and Population Dynamics at Rockefeller University. Using technology that offers a systemwide view of the aging process in mice, Cao has outlined discrete stages of aging, akin to those of embryonic development, that are defined by changes in molecular signals and specific cell populations. In humans, the process likely begins before age 30.
Cao’s interest in aging began in high school in Hebei, China, when he became acutely aware that his grandparents and parents were not going to live forever. While many teenagers awakening to mortality might turn to poetry or self-destructive behavior, Cao turned to science. Finding a way to slow aging became his lifelong goal, and it’s why he chose biology as his major at Peking University in Beijing.
Initially, Cao assumed that the deterioration of particular proteins and protein networks was responsible for aging, in line with the prevailing model. But then after college, when he was working in a lab trying to identify those proteins, he realized that a daunting number of them were associated with aging, and that their effects depended on the type of cell in which they were operating. It was a picture both more complex and more organized than he had thought.
Cao decided he needed data — lots of it — on thousands of molecular changes across hundreds of cell types. As a graduate student, he developed a high-throughput technology that could quantify these dynamics in embryonic development. When he started his own lab at Rockefeller in 2020, he put this technology to work on aging.
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In graduate school, Cao developed tools to identify changes in gene expression during embryonic development in mice. Now his lab applies these tools across an animal’s entire lifespan.
Karen Dias for Quanta Magazine
In one series of experiments, Cao and his team processed 21 million cells, sampled from 14 tissues or organs in about 50 male and female mice at five life stages, and built a data set of gene expression for each cell. “It’s extremely large-scale data,” Cao said. “You know which organ it’s from and which age it’s from, and you also know extensive molecular information.” Each stage was marked by a dramatic decline in or expansion of specific cell types.
Two of his landmark papers, published in 2025 and 2026 in Science, point to a radical redistribution of the cells that make up the body as mammals age, and describe some of the...