David Meyer

Research Overview

Aging follows reproducible patterns at the population level, yet individual organisms, tissues, and cells can age very differently. Even isogenic organisms raised under the same environment can show differences in health, function, and lifespan. Our research asks where this biological heterogeneity comes from, when it first emerges, how it changes over the course of life, and why some individuals remain resilient while others become vulnerable.
Our lab studies aging as a dynamic process shaped not only by genes and environment, but also by stochastic variation in molecular and cellular processes. We develop computational approaches to measure biological age and to quantify variation, entropy, and coordination in large-scale molecular datasets. These tools allow us to ask whether biological divergence increases with age and which aspects of this divergence are associated with later health and longevity.
We combine these approaches with studies in C. elegans, mammalian models, and human cohorts. We have developed transcriptomic aging clocks, revealed distinct aging rates across neuronal cell types, and identified interventions that slow neurodegeneration in vivo in C. elegans. Current work extends these ideas toward understanding how stochastic differences arise during development and early life, how they evolve across the lifespan, and which of them are associated with subsequent aging trajectories. Ultimately, we aim to understand not only how old an organism is biologically, but why aging trajectories diverge.