Ageing research in the post-genome era: new technologies for an old problem.

The sequencing of a growing number of genomes, and of the human genome in particular, has paved the way for remarkable technological innovations that are revolutionizing research across the life sciences. Large-scale sequencing and emerging techniques and approaches, like microarrays and systems biology, are changing the way researchers study life and its intrinsic complexity. Cells and the molecules that compose them, in particular proteins programmed from the genome to give rise to complex interactions and functions, can now be studied in a high-throughput fashion. Genomics and its derivative technologies promise to transform biomedical research and be the preeminent area of scientific discovery during the 21st century. New technologies are particularly useful in scientific fields that have already been the subject of considerable research, and thus for which substantial observations exist, but that remain largely unsolved (de Magalhães and Toussaint, 2004a). Biogerontology is one of such fields and the post-genome era promises to be a time of unprecedented breakthroughs in our understanding of ageing. The goal of this chapter is to review some of the key technological and methodological advances made possible by the recent sequencing of genomes and summarize their relevance to the study of complex traits like longevity, ageing and age-related diseases.