Matthew Simon Gill, PhD
Matthew Gill is a Staff Scientist at the Buck Institute for Aging Research, Novato, California. He received a degree in Biochemistry from the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, United Kingdom followed by a PhD in Endocrinology from the University of Manchester, United Kingdom. His PhD thesis focused on the development of growth factors immunoassays for use in the assessment of normal and disordered growth in children. In 1998 he was awarded a Medical Research Council Research Fellowship to examine non-linear growth in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans.
As a Brookdale Fellow Dr. Gill used the nematode system to examine the hormonal control of lifespan. Genetic perturbations in an insulin-like signaling pathway increase lifespan in C. elegans, some of which are further potentiated by mutations in a nuclear hormone receptor DAF-12. Dr Gill aims to identify and characterize the hormones, which act through DAF-12, putatively named agin and livin. Isolation of these hormones will not only further our understanding of the aging process in the nematode C. elegans but are likely to provide novel targets for pharmacological modulation of aging and senescence in other systems.
Brookdale Fellow Class of 2001