335 The Dog Aging Project: An open science study of aging in companion dogs.

Abstract Age is the greatest risk factor for most major causes of death and disability in developed nations. Although many aspects of aging are shared, the rate and order of various functional declines and onset of disease can vary greatly among individuals. The mechanisms underlying individual trajectories of aging are influenced by a complex combination of genes, environment and lifestyle that remains poorly understood. Most of what we know about the biology of aging comes from laboratory studies of inbred, lab-adapted species--yeast, worms, flies, and mice. While these laboratory models have facilitated rapid progress in identifying conserved mechanisms of aging, translation has been limited by the challenge of identifying causal determinants of aging in the real world. To better understand how genes and environment shape aging outside of the lab, we have turned to the companion dog, an animal that ages rapidly and shares the human environment. The Dog Aging Project is an open science, long-term longitudinal study of aging in tens of thousands of companion dogs. The objectives of this study are to identify the genetic, environmental, and lifestyle factors that influence aging in dogs, to discover the underlying molecular mechanisms by which they do so, and to use the insights gained to increase the duration of healthy lifespan in dogs and people.