Professor Joao Pedro Magalhaes PhD

Institute of Inflammation and Ageing
Professor of Molecular Biogerontology

Contact details

Email: j.p.magalhaes@bham.ac.uk
Twitter: @jpsenescence

Ageing has a profound impact on human society and modern medicine, yet it remains a major puzzle of biology. The goal of my work is to help understand the genetic, cellular, and molecular mechanisms of ageing. In the long term, I would like my work to help ameliorate age-related diseases and preserve health. No other biomedical field has so much potential to improve human health as research on the basic mechanisms of ageing.

Please visit our lab website https://rejuvenomicslab.com for further details about our work and publications, or see my TEDx talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrLgYhtoBXA

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6363-2465

https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=DZdgRE4AAAAJ

Qualifications

Professor of Molecular Biogerontolgy:

PhD in Biological Sciences, 2004
Licentiate in Microbiology, 1999

Biography

TEDx talk

Ted-Ed lesson

Prof de Magalhaes graduated in Microbiology in 1999 from the Escola Superior de Biotecnologia in his hometown of Porto, Portugal, and then obtained his PhD in 2004 from the University of Namur in Belgium. Following a postdoc with genomics pioneer Prof George Church at Harvard Medical School in Boston, USA, in 2008 Prof de Magalhaes was recruited to the University of Liverpool in the UK to establish his own group on genomic approaches to ageing. In 2022, Prof de Magalhaes was recruited to the University of Birmingham as Chair of Molecular Biogerontology where he currently leads the Genomics of Ageing and Rejuvenation Lab [http://rejuvenomicslab.com/].

His lab studies the ageing process and how we can manipulate it to fend off age-related diseases and improve human health. The lab’s research integrates different strategies, but its focal point is developing and applying experimental and computational methods that help bridge the gap between genotype and phenotype, a major challenge of the post-genome era, and help decipher the human genome and how it regulates complex processes like ageing.

Notably, his lab is a world-leader in employing genomics and bioinformatics to study ageing with pioneering work in studying gene networks of ageing and in sequencing and analyzing genomes from long-lived species. Prof de Magalhaes has authored over 100 publications and given over 100 invited talks, including three TEDx talks. His research has also been widely featured in the popular press (BBC, CNN, the Washington Post, the Financial Times and many others).

Prof de Magalhaes is an advisor/consultant for various organizations, including nonprofit foundations, universities, investment funds and biotech companies. In the long-term. Prof de Magalhaes would like his work to contribute to the development of interventions that preserve health and combat disease by manipulating the ageing process

Publications

Recent publications

Article

Wang, X, Zhang, Y, Chen, K, Liang, Z, Ma, J, Xia, R, de Magalhães, JP, Rigden, DJ, Meng, J & Song, B 2024, 'm7GHub V2.0: an updated database for decoding the N7-methylguanosine (m⁷G) epitranscriptome', Nucleic Acids Research, vol. 52, no. D1, pp. D203-D212. https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkad789

de Magalhães, JP 2023, 'The longevity bottleneck hypothesis: Could dinosaurs have shaped ageing in present‐day mammals?', BioEssays. https://doi.org/10.1002/bies.202300098

Dos Santos, GA, Chatsirisupachai, K, Avelar, RA & de Magalhães, JP 2023, 'Transcriptomic analysis reveals a tissue-specific loss of identity during ageing and cancer', BMC Genomics, vol. 24, no. 1, 644. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12864-023-09756-w

Mikaeloff, F, Gelpi, M, Escos, A, Knudsen, AD, Høgh, J, Benfield, T, de Magalhães, JP, Nielsen, SD & Neogi, U 2023, 'Transcriptomics age acceleration in prolonged treated HIV infection', Aging Cell. https://doi.org/10.1111/acel.13951

Lagger, C, Ursu, E, Equey, A, Avelar, RA, Pisco, AO, Tacutu, R & de Magalhães, JP 2023, 'scDiffCom: a tool for differential analysis of cell–cell interactions provides a mouse atlas of aging changes in intercellular communication', Nature Aging, vol. 3, no. 11, pp. 1446-1461. https://doi.org/10.1038/s43587-023-00514-x

Vega Magdaleno, GD, Bespalov, V, Zheng, Y, Freitas, AA & Lourenco Rocha De Magalhaes, JP 2022, 'Machine learning-based predictions of dietary restriction associations across ageing-related genes', BMC Bioinformatics, vol. 23, no. 1, 10. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12859-021-04523-8

Tejada-martinez, D, Avelar, RA, Lopes, I, Zhang, B, Novoa, G, De Magalhães, JP, Trizzino, M & Malik, H (ed.) 2022, 'Positive selection and enhancer evolution shaped lifespan and body mass in great apes', Molecular Biology and Evolution, vol. 39, no. 2, msab369. https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msab369

Mikaeloff, F, Svensson Akusjärvi, S, Ikomey, GM, Krishnan, S, Sperk, M, Gupta, S, Magdaleno, GDV, Escós, A, Lyonga, E, Okomo, MC, Tagne, CT, Babu, H, Lorson, CL, Végvári, Á, Banerjea, AC, Kele, J, Hanna, LE, Singh, K, De Magalhães, JP, Benfeitas, R & Neogi, U 2022, 'Trans cohort metabolic reprogramming towards glutaminolysis in long-term successfully treated HIV-infection', Communications Biology, vol. 5, no. 1, 27. https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-021-02985-3

Liu, L, Song, B, Chen, K, Zhang, Y, De Magalhães, JP, Rigden, DJ, Lei, X & Wei, Z 2022, 'WHISTLE server: a high-accuracy genomic coordinate-based machine learning platform for RNA modification prediction', Methods, vol. 203, pp. 378-382. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ymeth.2021.07.003

Chatsirisupachai, K, Lesluyes, T, Paraoan, L, Van Loo, P & De Magalhães, JP 2021, 'An integrative analysis of the age-associated multi-omic landscape across cancers', Nature Communications, vol. 12, no. 1, 2345 . https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-22560-y

Song, Z, Huang, D, Song, B, Chen, K, Song, Y, Liu, G, Su, J, Magalhães, JPD, Rigden, DJ & Meng, J 2021, 'Attention-based multi-label neural networks for integrated prediction and interpretation of twelve widely occurring RNA modifications', Nature Communications, vol. 12, no. 1, 4011 . https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-24313-3

Review article

de Magalhães, JP 2023, 'Ageing as a software design flaw', Genome Biology, vol. 24, no. 1, 51. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13059-023-02888-y

Bronikowski, AM, Meisel, RP, Biga, PR, Walters, J, Mank, JE, Larschan, E, Wilkinson, GS, Valenzuela, N, Conard, AM, Magalhães, JP, Duan, J, Elias, AE, Gamble, T, Graze, R, Gribble, KE, Kreiling, JA & Riddle, NC 2022, 'Sex‐specific aging in animals: perspective and future directions', Aging Cell, vol. 21, no. 2, e13542. https://doi.org/10.1111/acel.13542

Short survey

De Magalhães, JP & Ocampo, A 2022, 'Cellular reprogramming and the rise of rejuvenation biotech', Trends in Biotechnology, vol. 40, no. 6, pp. 639-642. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tibtech.2022.01.011

De Magalhães, JP 2022, 'Every gene can (and possibly will) be associated with cancer', Trends in Genetics, vol. 38, no. 3, pp. 216-217. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tig.2021.09.005

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