Stephen Treaster, Ph.D.
Research Scientist IStephen is a geneticist and bioinformatician researching how lifespan has evolved across the tree of life and how those mechanisms may be applied to extend human health. His lab at GMGI mines and compares the genomes of exceptional species to discover mechanisms of lifespan regulation, then models those mechanisms in zebrafish to modulate the aging process. He began his scientific career in aging research at UConn, earning his BSc in Molecular and Cell Biology along with minors in Bioinformatics, Chemistry, and Philosophy. There, he was drawn to the therapeutic potential of stem cells in aging and his honors thesis was on the differentiation of NT-ESCs. His bioinformatics training pointed him towards comparative biology to understand aging, which formed the basis of his PhD research in Molecular Medicine at UTHSCSA. In the Austad Lab there, he compared protein stability across bivalves and mammals and discovered unprecedented stability in the longest-lived animal, the Ocean Quahog. Just prior to joining GMGI, Stephen was a postdoctoral research scientist at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital in the Harris Lab, where he continued to build on comparative biology of aging using computational approaches. He developed novel convergence tools to find shared mechanisms underlying the evolution of Rockfish longevity and human lifespan, as well as established the ancestral state of Rockfishes to be long lived. Stephen’s lab continues to search for evolutionary informed solutions to aging and test them to extend lifespan and healthspan in lab models, ultimately to inform treatments to delay age-related diseases in people.
Education
2009 – BSc Molecular and Cell Biology, University of Connecticut
2014 – PhD Molecular Medicine, University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio: Austad Lab
Research Interests
Aging is a universal challenge for life, yet different species do so at wildly different rates and timings. Inherent to this variable trait is the linked ability to maintain heath and resist age-related diseases. While most species lose critical functionality in weeks, months, or a few years, some species are able to resist cancer, heart disease, and maintain neuromuscular function in an unforgiving wild for centuries. How this diversity has evolved and is regulated is a complete mystery, yet knowledge of these mechanisms would have untold value towards understanding and mitigating the inception of human aging, which remains the greatest risk factor for the diseases that plague modern society.
My research taps into the natural diversity of lifespans across species and populations to identify shared genomic signatures, produced by evolution, to regulate those changes. This work includes generating and mining genomic data from exceptional species and developing tools for their analysis and intersection with diverse ‘omics resources, including human population variation. Shared evolutionary signatures underlying lifespan shifts are then tested and modeled in zebrafish to identify molecular mechanisms that will extend healthspan, ultimately to inform treatments to delay age-related diseases in people.
Click here to view more of Dr. Treaster’s work in the Treaster Lab at GMGI.
Research Profile Links
https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephen-treaster/
https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=uhBIeXUAAAAJ
Lab Link
https://gmgi.org/the-treaster-lab/Castro J., Fagerstrom, K., Treaster S., Duryea J., Charles J., Harris MP. (2025) The function and regulation of celsr1a in skeletal age-associated homeostasis and repair. Journal of Gerontology: Biological Sciences
Treaster S., Deelen J., Daane J., Murabito J., Karasik K., Harris MP. (2023) Convergent genomics of longevity in rockfishes highlights the genetics of human life span variation Science Advances 2023 Jan 11;9(2):eadd2743
Treaster S., Daane J., Harris MP. (2021) Refining Convergent Rate Analysis with Topology in Mammalian Longevity and Marine Transitions. Mol. Biol. Evol. 38, 5190–5203.
Treaster S., Karasik, D., and Harris, MP. (2021) Footprints in the Sand: Deep Taxonomic Comparisons in Vertebrate Genomics to Unveil the Genetic Programs of Human Longevity. Front. Genet. 12.
Peskin B., Henke K., Cumplido N., Treaster S., Harris M., Bagnat M., Arratia G. (2020) Notochordal Signals Establish Phylogenetic Identity of the Teleost Spine. Current Biology
Li C, Barton C, Henke K, Daane J, Treaster S, Caetano-Lopes J, Tanguay RL, Harris MP. (2020) celsr1a is essential for tissue homeostasis and onset of aging phenotypes in the zebrafish. eLife 9, e50523
Treaster, S.B., Chaudhuri, A.R., Austad, S.N. (2015) Longevity and GAPDH Stability in Bivalves and Mammals: A Convenient Marker for Comparative Gerontology and Proteostasis. PLoS ONE 10, e0143680
Treaster, S.B., Ridgway, I.D., Richardson, C.A., Gaspar, M.B., Chaudhuri, A.R., and Austad, S.N. (2014). Superior proteome stability in the longest-lived animal. AGE 36, 9597.
Zhang, Y., Bokov, A., Gelfond, J., Soto, V., Ikeno, Y., Hubbard, G., Diaz, V., Sloane, L., Maslin, K., Treaster, S., et al. (2014). Rapamycin extends life and health in C57BL/6 mice. J. Gerontol. A. Biol. Sci. Med. Sci. 69, 119-30
Sung, L.-Y., Chang, C.-C., Amano, T., Lin, C.-J., Amano, M., Treaster, S.B., Xu, J., Chang, W.-F., Nagy, Z.P., Yang, X., et al. (2010). Efficient derivation of embryonic stem cells from nuclear transfer and parthenogenetic embryos derived from cryopreserved oocytes. Cell. Reprogramming 12, 203–211.