Bérénice A. Benayoun, PhD

Associate professor @USC Gero. French scientist. Aging, omics, immunity, sex-dimorphism. Views my own. She/her.

[Bérénice A. Benayoun, PhD @BBParis1984]

Sharing our new essay, out today at @PLOSBiology: "The problem with one-size-fits-all medicine: Biological sex and the aging immune system", where we argue that personalized medicine must account for #sex.
https://t.co/hpe7fSr2ku

[Laura Minquini @LauraMinquini]

Warning for women going through IVF. Please ask what happens if your clinic was to close down. I know everyone checks reviews but also find out how the business is set up.

A string of venture backed clinics closing in Europe has left a lot of women and couples in the wind.

[Bérénice A. Benayoun, PhD @BBParis1984]

New pilot proposal on research hub: "Benchmarking cross-species-nominated drug candidates targeting human granulosa cell aging"
https://t.co/3GG59giMgU

[Webb Lab @ The Buck Institute @TheWebbLab]

The abstract deadline is coming up for the FASEB on Epigenetics and Aging! Oct 19-22 in Malahide, Ireland. Submit now to be considered for a short talk! Amazing lineup including Yang Shi @DenaDubal @BrunetLab @BBParis1984 and many more! https://t.co/PvLHROZibH

[Aging Science News @AgingBiology]

Shared and niche-specific transcriptional signatures of macrophage aging revealed by a cross-tissue meta-analysis
https://t.co/v3vOmdGw82

[Dr. CY @klyoomdphd]

A comprehensive 2026 meta-analysis reveals that aging immune cells undergo lipid peroxidation and iron overload, driving systemic inflammaging. https://t.co/A2m3vBMsWs

[Bérénice A. Benayoun, PhD @BBParis1984]

RT @USCLeonardDavis: Why does the immune system become less effective as we age?

New research from USC Leonard Davis shows that macrophag…

[Bérénice A. Benayoun, PhD @BBParis1984]

We are grateful to @hevolution_f for supporting this research, and hope this metaanalysis will be a useful resource for the field of immune aging research!
Congratulations again to #Ella and her collaborators, grad student #EyaelTewelde and undergrad #LeonChen 4/4

[Bérénice A. Benayoun, PhD @BBParis1984]

Happy to share this new work by excellent Benayoun lab PhD Candidate #EllaSchwab, out today @BMCBiology: "Shared and niche-specific transcriptional signatures of macrophage aging revealed by a cross-tissue meta-analysis" @USCLeonardDavis 1/
https://t.co/ZOfPZDY61Y

[Bérénice A. Benayoun, PhD @BBParis1984]

The short answer: there are both universal and niche-specific effects (and sex-specific effects - independently supported by other unpublished work) to macrophage aging, which will be important to account for in interventions to mitigate inflammaging and immunosenescence. 3/

[UCSF Bakar Aging Research Institute @UCSFAging]

A fish that lives just months but teaches us about aging? BARI’s Param Priya Singh just launched Killiverse: an interactive platform to explore killifish multi-omics data in one spot. Perfect for researchers and curious minds! https://t.co/3axFvJBF8x

[Ihtesham Ali @ihteshamali]

Jennifer Doudna won the Nobel Prize for gene editing and went on Bloomberg to say the chatbots everyone is betting on cannot innovate at all. Every promise Silicon Valley is making about AI curing disease just hit the one person qualified to check it.

She has spent her whole career inside the actual frontier of curing disease.

So when she talks about what AI can and cannot do in biology, she is not guessing. She is reporting from inside the lab.

Her words were blunt. She is not seeing chatbots innovate. They summarize data. They write reports. They do not come up with a brand new idea nobody has ever had.

Then the interviewer pushed. So you're saying AI can't innovate?

Doudna did not flinch. She does not know if it can't. She just does not see it doing it right now.

This lands harder when you remember who is making the opposite case. Sam Altman says AI will eliminate disease within five years. Larry Ellison says AI will cure cancer in a 48 hour window.

An OpenAI executive even floated that the company should get a cut of sales on any drug discovered through ChatGPT. Doudna answered that in two words. Good luck.

Even the cancer specialists Altman is selling to keep warning that cancer is not one disease but hundreds, each needing its own cure, and that compute does not skip the years of lab work.

Her reason is simpler. Biology is hard. You cannot simulate your way to an understanding of the human body.

The people promising cures are the ones selling the tool.

The person who actually won a Nobel building them is telling you it has not happened yet.

Source: Bloomberg Originals

Watch the full video on their official channel.

[Jennifer Trowbridge @TrowbridgeLab]

New preprint from our lab led by @jaynathemistry! 🧬

We asked: what upstream signal ignites the inflammatory cycle that drives clonal hematopoiesis (CH)?

Answer: neutrophil-derived S100A8/A9 alarmins.

https://t.co/bpqDmrqybR

🧵1/4

[Bérénice A. Benayoun, PhD @BBParis1984]

@anshulkundaje @jesse_caps Very curious about this!

[Eran Mukamel @emukamel]

@satijalab Kudos! Could you also please help the field understand that they shouldn't use FindMarkers for DEG analysis -- the time has come to move beyond pseudoreplication (n=# of cells) and associated false positives/inflated significance.

A warning message would be helpful.

[USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology @USCLeonardDavis]

In a recent Health article, Berenice Benayoun (@bbparis1984) emphasized that #menopause is about more than fertility, explaining that declining estrogen and progesterone levels are linked to increased risks of heart disease, stroke and osteoporosis.
https://t.co/DWAkslQbcI

[Itamar Harel @ItamarHarel]

1/6) What if aging begins, in part, as a bargain made in youth? In turquoise killifish, editing vgll3—a gene linked to puberty-timing in humans and salmon—revealed one of the first causal single-gene examples of antagonistic pleiotropy in vertebrate aging 🧵

[Itamar Harel @ItamarHarel]

We got the cover!!

[Agingdoc🩺Dr David Barzilai🔔MD PhD MS MBA DipABLM @agingdoc1]

The problem with one-size-fits-all medicine: Biological sex and the aging immune system

@BBParis1984

https://t.co/kd5H69wTCZ

[jobRxiv @jobRxiv]

Research lab tech II position at USC in LA to take care of a research killifish colony, involved in cutting-edge aging research!

Research Lab Technician II - Killifish (Benayoun lab) @BBParis1984
University of Southern California / Benayoun lab

See the full job description on jobRxiv: https://t.co/kcwCctNaxn

#animalhusbandry #animalmodelsmicefish #Aquaculture #aquaticbiology
#ScienceJobs
https://t.co/SJJoE9TJC9