Can biomarkers of biological age be used to assess cumulative lifetime experience?
Objective methods for assessing the cumulative lifetime experience of non-human animals would be valuable. We develop the hypothesis that biological age is a common currency that integrates the overall quality of an animal’s lifetime experience across a range of types of exposure. Ageing is the result of the accumulation of somatic damage, and its rate […]
Cumulative stress in research animals: Telomere attrition as a biomarker in a welfare context?
Progress in improving animal welfare is currently limited by the lack of objective methods for assessing lifetime experience. I propose that telomere attrition, a cellular biomarker of biological age, provides a molecular measure of cumulative experience that could be used to assess the welfare impact of husbandry regimes and/or experimental procedures on non-human animals. I […]