Career
In 1976, Kenyon graduated from the University of Georgia as
Valedictorian, earning bachelor's degrees in chemistry and
biochemistry.
In 1981, Kenyon received her Ph.D. from MIT,
where she worked in Graham Walker's laboratory. Her doctoral research used gene-expression
profiles to identify a set of genes in E. coli that are activated
in response to DNA-damaging agents.
From 1982 to 1986, Kenyon conducted postdoctoral research with Nobel laureate
Sydney Brenner at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge,
England, where she studied the development of
C. elegans. In 1986, she joined the faculty of the University of California, San
Francisco.
Since 1986, Kenyon has been at UCSF, where she was the Herbert Boyer Distinguished Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics and is now an American Cancer Society Professor.
In 1993, Kenyon discovered that a single-gene mutation in daf-2 could double the lifespan of C. elegans, and that this could be reversed by a second mutation in daf-16. Kenyon and her collaborators have since extended the lifespan of the worm
C. elegans by as much as
sixfold with further manipulation of the insulin/IGF-I pathway.
In 1999, Kenyon co-founded Elixir Pharmaceuticals with Leonard Guarente to try to discover and develop drugs that would slow down the process that makes people age.
Beginning in November 2013, Kenyon served as a part-time advisor at Calico, a new company focused on health, well-being, and longevity. In April 2014, Kenyon was named Vice President of Aging Research at Calico, although Kenyon remains affiliated with UCSF as an emeritus professor.
Genetic discoveries
Beginning in 1986, Kenyon's early work helped establish that Hox genes,
previously characterized through their role in patterning the segmented body
of Drosophila, also control body patterning in the unsegmented nematode
C. elegans. In 1988, Kenyon and her collaborators showed that the
C. elegans patterning gene mab-5 contains a homeobox homologous to that
of the Drosophila Hox gene Antennapedia. These findings contributed to the recognition that Hox genes form an
evolutionarily ancient system for patterning the bodies of diverse
animals.
Kenyon's 1993 lifespan discovery sparked an intensive study of the molecular biology of aging, including work by Leonard Guarente and David Sinclair.
Kenyon's findings helped establish that evolutionarily conserved signaling
pathways regulate lifespan across the animal kingdom.
