The yeast S. cerevisiae is an attractive organism for this type of research because of its conserved intracellular processes, and its well-developed genetic and molecular protocols. For example, it is impossible or impractical to perform genome-wide over-expression screens for lifespan extending genes in any other eukaryote, whereas Mr. Powers has preformed such a screen in S. cerevisiae. Currently, Mr. Powers has approximately 200 primary candidate genes, out of 35,000 original over-expression transformants screened.

Mr. Powers is identifying these candidate genes by sequence, and retesting them using a high-throughput lifespan assay he developed in the lab. Follow-up experiments will depend on the nature of the genes that retest for lifespan extension, but will focus on identifying molecular roles for their lifespan extension.